Court of International Trade Judge Leo Gordon ruled against importer Cyber Power Systems in four motions -- two from Cyber Power, and two from the government -- in a case regarding the country of origin of imported surgery protectors (Cyber Power Systems v. U.S., CIT #20-00124).
The Commerce Department cannot deduct Section 232 national security duties from antidumping duty respondent Borusan Mannesman's U.S. price because the duties are remedial, temporary and deducting them would count as a double remedy, making them unlike normal customs duties, the respondent argued. Filing a reply brief Aug. 4 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the respondent said Commerce failed to conduct a "fulsome analysis" of whether the Section 232 duties are more like normal customs duties or to special duties, like Section 201 safeguards, and instead "confined its analysis" to finding distinctions between Section 232 and Section 201 duties. The agency also failed to acknowledge the "legal and constitutional distinction between regular duties imposed by Congress" and special duties imposed by the president (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2097).
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 4 order denied defendant Greenlight Organic and Parambir Singh Aulakh's motion for summary judgment over the date that the U.S. discovered customs fraud for the purpose of finding whether the statute of limitations had run out. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that the undisputed facts don't back any of three dates floated by the defendants as the date that the U.S. first received evidence of Greenlight's double invoicing scheme. In the scheme, Greenlight is accused of fraudulently misclassifying its Vietnam-origin knit garments.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP and importer Ohka America reached a settlement over the proper tariff classification of photoresists in three different cases at the Court of International Trade. According to the three separate stipulated judgments on agreed statement of facts, the parties reached an agreement on the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for the entries, dropping the duty rate from 6.5% to 3%. CBP originally liquidated the photoresists under HTS subheading 3707.90.32, which provides for "Chemical preparations for photographic uses (other than varnishes, glues, adhesives and similar preparations...: Other:Chemical preparations for photographic uses: Other." The parties agreed, though, to liquidate the entries under subheading 3707.10.00, whch provides for “Chemical preparations for photographic uses (other than varnishes, glues, adhesives and similar preparations). Sensitizing emulsions." The cases were filed in 2005, 2006 and 2008 (Ohka America v. United States, CIT #05-00118, #06-00415, #08-00029).
CBP and Lerner New York reached a settlement over the proper classification of two types of ladies' knitted tops. Filing a stipulated judgment on an agreed statement of facts at the Court of International Trade Aug. 1, the parties settled on a Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for the tops, dropping the duty rate from 17% to 10.9%. The dispute concerned ladies' knitted tops of over 90% cotton and less than 10% spandex with a built-in shelf bra and ladies' knitted tops of manmade fibers with a built-in shelf bra (Lerner New York v. U.S., CIT #05-00412).
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 4 order denied defendant Greenlight Organic and Parambir Singh Aulakh's motion for summary judgment over when the date that customs fraud was discovered for the purpose of finding whether the statute of limitations had ran out. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that the undisputed facts don't back any of three dates floated by the defendants as the date that the U.S. first received evidence of Greenlight's double invoicing scheme. In the scheme, Greenlight is accused of fraudulently misclassifying its Vietnam-origin knit garments. Choe-Groves ordered all parties to file a joint proposed pre-trial order.
The Commerce Department added certain service-related revenues in antidumping duty respondent Nippon Steel's U.S. price in voluntarily requested remand results, dropping the exporter's dumping margin from 11.70% to 10.12%. Agreeing it "inadvertently" left three service-related expenses out of its calculations of Nippon Steel's U.S. price, Commerce requested the voluntary remand, including them in the price calculations. Nippon Steel still took issue with Commerce's draft revision, prompting the agency to make further revisions to the calculation of the net price used in the differential pricing test and the revenue for the constructed export price (CEP) profit rate (Nippon Steel v. U.S., CIT #21-00533).
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CBP, in closely linked cases, determined that there is substantial evidence that importers Starille, Nutrawave and Newtrend USA evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on glycine from China (EAPA Consolidated Case No. 7647), while there was a lack of substantial evidence that the same importers evaded an AD order on glycine from Thailand (EAPA Consolidated Case No. 7663).