President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate the duty-free de minimis threshold for goods from China, issued as part of his 10% tariff hike on Chinese products, likely will face legal challenges due to the economic importance of the de minimis rule, customs attorney Lawrence Friedman told us. However, many questions remain on the precise scope of any resulting change, along with the legal theory underpinning it.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on Jan. 27 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Commerce Department must more fully explain its calculation methodology used to account for the differences in volumes of lumber purchased by exporter Les Produits Forestiers D&G and its affiliate, Les Produits Forestiers Portbec, from unaffiliated suppliers, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public Jan. 29. Judge Mark Barnett said the U.S. failed to "clarify Commerce's decision-making" behind the calculation in the expedited countervailing duty investigation on softwood lumber products from Canada.
After the Trump administration released a memo outlining the scope of trade action to be taken during his term, one thing became clear, according to a variety of trade attorneys: antidumping duty and countervailing duty rates are about to soar.
Responding to opposition to its motion for judgment, steel importer CME Acquisitions said “judicial and administrative precedent” still support pulling forward prior calculated antidumping duty rates for non-selected respondents to a review when all selected respondents are hit with adverse facts available (CME Acquisitions v. United States, CIT # 24-00032).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Vietnamese circular welded steel pipe exporter SeAH Steel Vina denied in a Jan. 13 brief that it was confusing antidumping and countervailing duty reviews with circumvention inquiries. Leaning on Loper Bright, it again argued that circumvention inquiries can’t be conducted into the same products from the same countries if they were previously found not to have been dumped or subsidized (SeAH Steel Vina Corp. v. United States, CIT Consol. # 23-00256, -00257, -00258).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 21 sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's remand results in the expedited countervailing duty review on softwood lumber products from Canada, in a confidential decision. Judge Mark Barnett sent the review back for Commerce to "reconsider or further explain its subsidy calculations with respect to" the consolidated entity of D&G/Portbec. The court found for the government on the remaining issues (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).
Responding to a second remand order by the Court of International Trade, the Commerce Department again chose to calculate review respondent Officine Technosider’s costs quarterly, rather than annually. It said its decision made sense despite the “unique situation” in which Commerce had access to only one quarter of Officine’s U.S. sales data (Officine Tecnosider SRL v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00001).
The Commerce Department improperly found that exporter Balkrishna Industries didn't benefit from the Advanced Authorization Scheme in India as part of the 2022 review of the countervailing duty order on new pneumatic off-the-road tires from India, petitioner Titan Tire Corp. argued. Filing a complaint at the Court of International Trade on Dec. 20, Titan Tire said Commerce erred in accepting a "post hoc and incomplete examination" of the program performed by the Indian government (Titan Tire Corp. v. United States, CIT # 24-00207).