Importer Trijicon's tritium-powered gun sights are "lamps" and not "apparatus," slotting them under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 9405, the Court of International Trade ruled on Feb. 16. Judge Mark Barnett said the gun sights do not meet definition of "apparatus" put forward by either Trijicon or the government, who respectively defined the term as a set of materials or equipment and a complex device. The court instead found that the products "are readily classified as lamps," which are defined as "any of various devices for producing light."
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 20 rejected a Commerce Department scope ruling finding R210-S engines made by Chonging Rato Technology Co. fall within the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on vertical shaft engines between 99cc and up to 225cc and parts thereof from China.
Georgia woman Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois filed suit at the Court of International Trade Feb. 16 to contest six questions on the October 2021 customs broker license exam. In her complaint, Stoute-Francois said that after appealing the test results to the Treasury Department, she was left just short of the 75% grade needed to pass the test, failing at 73.75% (Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois v. U.S., CIT # 24-00046).
A draft text on World Trade Organization dispute settlement reform efforts was released Feb. 16, ahead of the 13th Ministerial Conference, which is set to be held Feb. 26-29. In all, the text includes 11 sections, covering issues including alternative dispute resolution procedures and arbitration, panel proceedings, compliance and transparency. Notably, the text doesn't include any discussion of the appeal or review mechanism, which is seen as the largest sticking point in reform talks.
The U.S. opened a customs penalty lawsuit against California importer Rago Tires, alleging that the company avoided antidumping and countervailing duty orders on truck and bus tires from China. The government is looking to collect $56,435.48 from Rago, quadruple the amount of duties the company allegedly failed to pay (U.S. v. Rago Tires, CIT # 24-00043).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 15 said companies that submit requests for administrative review in antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings can intervene as a matter of right at the Court of International Trade.
Tire exporter Pirelli Tyre told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the Commerce Department improperly applied its own legal framework for assessing whether the company rebutted the presumption of Chinese state control in the third review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China. Filing a reply brief on Feb. 9, Pirelli said the agency ignored the policy's explicit directive to link all four of the factors concerning de facto foreign state control to a company's "export activities" (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2266).
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded parts and sustained parts of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, its coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and its application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.
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The Commerce Department on Feb. 12 found on remand, and under protest, that a German subsidy was not de jure specific to an exporter of forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).