An importer is asking the Court of International Trade to direct CBP to reliquidate entries of Chinese citric acid anhydrous that Thatcher says CBP improperly liquidated as subject to antidumping and countervailing duties. In its March 31 complaint, Thatcher said that CBP extended liquidation of the entries with neither a "statutory basis" nor the "legal authority" to do so and without instruction from the Commerce Department (Thatcher Company, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00067).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “properly exercised its authority” under the Section 307 modification provisions of the 1974 Trade Act when it ordered the imposition of the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the Court of International Trade ruled in an April 1 opinion. Test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, plus the more than 3,600 complaints that followed, sought to vacate the tariffs on grounds that lists 3 and 4A were unlawful without USTR launching a new Section 301 investigation.
There is no error in the Commerce Department's liquidation instructions, so importer MS Solar's lawsuit under Section 1581(i), the Court of International Trade's "residual" jurisdiction, should be dismissed, the U.S. said in a March 30 reply brief backing its motion to dismiss. Instead, the case should have been filed under Section 1581(c) to contest the antidumping duty review itself, the brief said (MS Solar Investments v. United States, CIT #21-00303).
CBP is consolidating two Enforce and Protect Act investigations and setting interim measures against Phoenix Metal for alleged evasion of AD and CVD orders A-570-079 and C-570-080 on cast iron soil pipe from China. According to the March 28 notice, the EAPA investigation followed a Feb. 17, 2022, complaint by the Cast Iron Soil Pipe Institute that alleged Phoenix Metal acted as importer of record and exported soil pipe covered by the AD/CVD orders to Glendale Plumbing and Fire Supply, Inc. using the Cambodian "front company" Little Fireflies International.
Washington-based importer Keirton USA isn't permitted to import drug paraphernalia since Washington state law doesn't expressly authorize the possession of such items, the U.S. told the Court of International Trade in a March 28 cross-motion for judgment. If the state's current laws did authorize possession of drug paraphernalia, then the mere absence of criminal liability -- the situation in Washington -- would consume the whole statute federally outlawing possession of drug paraphernalia, DOJ said (Keirton USA, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00452).
CBP is setting interim measures against six companies for possible evasion of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets and vanities from China. According to a March 10 notice, CBP has determined that there is reasonable suspicion that Uni-Tile, Durian, Kingway, Lonlas, Maikai, and Top Kitchen evaded AD/CVD by transshipping covered merchandise through Malaysia.
The Supreme Court of the U.S. declined to take up a key case over the president's power under the Section 232 national security tariff statute. Rejecting a petition from importer Transpacific Steel and several other companies, SCOTUS in effect upheld a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision that said that the president can increase tariffs under Section 232 beyond procedural time limits.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated March 23 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 Court of International Trade partially remanded the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation on utility-scale wind towers from Vietnam, in a March 24 confidential opinion. The U.S. trade group Wind Tower Trade Coalition brought the case to argue in favor of an adverse facts available rate for an exporter. According to the coalition's complaint, the plaintiff challenged Commerce's decision to rely on respondent CS Wind's South Korean affiliate's sales revenue for wind towers as the denominator in the subsidy calculations rather than CS Wind's own sales revenue. The coalition also said that Commerce erred in relying on CS Wind's alleged contradictory reporting on the country of origin and supplies for its steel plate inputs when calculating a subsidy rate for the Import Duty Exemptions on Imports of Raw Materials for Exporting Goods program (Wind Tower Trade Coalition v. U.S., CIT #20-03692).