Importer Gum Products International filed a pair of complaints at the Court of International Trade on July 17 to contest the Commerce Department's scope rulings concerning the company's oilfield equipment lubricant and food ingredient products. In both scope determinations, Commerce said the importer's products fall under the scope of the antidumping duty order on xanthan gum from China (Gum Products International v. United States, CIT #'s 25-00108, -00109).
The Court of International Trade on July 18 granted the government's motion for default judgment against importer Rayson Global and its owner Doris Cheng, ordering the defendants to pay a civil penalty totaling nearly $3.4 million along with all duties, taxes and fees that remain unpaid on the unliquidated entries of mattress innersprings at issue in the case. Judge Timothy Stanceu granted the motion for default judgment after previously rejecting the government's valuation of the merchandise due to its lack of factual support. This time around, Stanceu found that the U.S. properly pleaded that Rayson and Cheng negligently declared their Chinese-origin innerspring as being from Thailand, avoiding ordinary 6% duties, Section 301 duties and 234.51% antidumping duties.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
DOJ's criminal division has identified trade fraud as a top priority, assigning its market integrity and major frauds unit to handle tariff evasion cases, a DOJ official confirmed to us. The official said that the major frauds unit is shifting resources to trade and looking to cases involving "long-running frauds, senior executives, and large volumes of alleged losses from unlawful tariff evasion schemes."
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP unlawfully excluded importer Maxeon Americas' solar module entries on the basis that the goods were made, in whole or in part, in Xinjiang or by a company on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, Maxeon argued in a July 15 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The importer said the agency ignored "substantial and persuasive" evidence showing the company's Max6 model solar modules weren't made in Xinjiang or by a listed company, adding that the agency appears to be using an "unreasonably difficult standard" in reviewing whether goods are made in Xinjiang (Maxeon Americas v. United States, CIT # 25-00074).
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 between July 7 and July 14 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):
Petitioner Nucor Steel filed a July 11 complaint challenging the Commerce Department’s 2022 countervailing duty reviews on certain corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea. It said again that Commerce should have countervailed three debt-to-equity swaps received by mandatory respondent KG Dongbu Steel in 2015 and 2016, an issue that previously arose in the 2019 administrative review (see 2504110057) (Nucor Corp. v. United States, CIT # 25-00107).
The Commerce Department published July 9 its remand results of its 2018 countervailing duty review of Chinese-origin multilayered wood flooring, reversing its use of adverse facts available for exporter Senmao after deciding Senmao’s customers didn’t use China’s Export Buyers Credit Program (Evolutions Flooring v. United States, CIT Consol. #21-00591).