The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade granted importer Blockstream Services USA's bid to set aside the court's dismissal of the company's customs suit on the classification of its cryptocurrency miners. The suit was dismissed for failure to prosecute after Blockstream didn't move to extend the time for the case to remain on the customs case management calendar (see 2404030045). Blockstream had apologized to the court for the calendaring error that led to the dismissal. Judge Gary Katzmann granted the motion, and the case will remain on the case management calendar through March 31, 2026 (Blockstream Services USA v. United States, CIT # 22-00101).
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit questioned the Commerce Department's decision to pull forward a 78% adverse facts available rate from a prior antidumping duty review in the 2018-19 AD review on steel nails from Taiwan, but not the lower rate for the non-individually examined respondents (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2128).
Changes to the Court of International Trade's fees and "Listing of Judges of the Court" were made March 20 and will become effective May 1, the court announced. The judges listings were amended to add new appointees Lisa Wang and Joseph Laroski.
The Court of International Trade on April 4 upheld the Commerce Department's use of the invoice date rather than the contract date for the date of sale for respondents Kaptan Demir and Colakoglu Metalurji in the 2020-21 review of the antidumping duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey.
The Court of International Trade on April 3 again sent back the Commerce Department's decision to countervail exporter KG Dongbu Steel's three debt-to-equity restructurings after initially declining to countervail them in the preceding three countervailing duty reviews on corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 4 sustained the Commerce Department's decision that Australian exporter BlueScope Steel (AIS) didn't reimburse its affiliated U.S. importer, BlueScope Steel Americas, for antidumping duties. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Leonard Stark echoed the Court of International Trade in finding that it would have been "unreasonable" for the exporter to include the AD in the price charged to the importer because the "exporter itself was not responsible for those duties."
Australia and China recently notified the World Trade Organization that they are ending their dispute involving Chinese antidumping and countervailing duties on wine from Australia (see 2310230060. The WTO circulated the notification to WTO members April 3, the trade body announced.
Importer Blockstream Services USA on April 3 moved to set aside the Court of International Trade's April 1 order dismissing its tariff classification challenge for failure to prosecute (see 2404020013) (Blockstream Services USA v. U.S., CIT # 22-00101).
Grace Ocean Private Limited, owner of the vessel that brought down a segment of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last week, filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on April 1 seeking to avoid liability "for any loss or damage arising out of" the vessel's collision with the bridge. The manager of the M/V Dali vessel, Synergy Marine, also joined the petition (In the Matter of the Petition of Grace Ocean Private Limited, D. Md. # 24-00941).