The Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 11 that imported industrial shredders that use blades to break up material carry no duties because they are classifiable as crushing and grinding machines.
CBP CROSS Rulings
CBP issues binding advance rulings in connection with the importation of merchandise into the United States. They issue the rulings to give the trade community transparency of how CBP will treat a prospective import or carrier transaction. Common rulings include the tariff classification, country of origin, or free trade agreement applicability of merchandise, among other things. These rulings are available in CBP's Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) database.
A U.S. gun sights importer again argued in the Court of International Trade on Dec. 8 that its products should be classified under the tariff schedule as “apparatuses,” not as “light fittings,” because the latter provision didn't fully cover the sights’ use of ionizing radiation (Trijicon Inc. v. United States, CIT # 22-00040).
The Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 11 that large industrial shredders imported from Germany were classifiable as machines built for the purpose of “crushing and grinding,” despite CBP's arguments their use of blades for that purpose made them cutting machines instead. Granting the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, it directed CBP to classify the shredders, imported by U.S. company Vecoplan, under the duty-free subheading 8479.82, rather than as "other" machines of subheading 8479.89, as CBP had classified them.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A Chinese brick exporter alleged Dec. 4 at the Court of International Trade that the Commerce Department is illegally expanding the scope of its antidumping and countervailing duty orders on Chinese-imported magnesia carbon bricks (Fedmet Resources v. U.S., CIT # 23-00117).
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during Dec. 7 oral arguments sharply questioned importer Rimco's arguments that it didn't need to raise an Eighth Amendment challenge to its adverse facts available rate administratively at the Commerce Department before challenging it in court (Rimco v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2079).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Textile gloves with a plastic coating on the palm and fingers are classifiable in the tariff schedule as gloves, not as articles of plastics, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Dec. 6 opinion.
CBP's failure to seek clarification from the Commerce Department on whether importer Vanguard Trading Co.'s surface products were subject to the antidumping duty order on quartz surface products from China as part of an AD evasion case was "arbitrary and capricious," Vanguard told the Court of International Trade in a Dec. 4 complaint (Vanguard Trading Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00253).
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