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).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's decision to rescind the 2019 reviews of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China with regard to exporter Kingtom Aluminio following CBP's decision to reverse its finding that Kingtom evaded the orders.
CBP properly found that importers American Pacific Plywood, InterGlobal Forest and U.S. Global Forest evaded the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on plywood from China via Cambodian producer LB Wood, the Court of International Trade held on July 9. Judge M. Miller Baker sustained the evasion determination over a host of legal, procedural and factual claims made by InterGlobal.
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 on July 1 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):
CBP erred when it applied a double substantial transformation test to importer JBF Bahrain's inputs when treaty language explicitly instructed it to use an alternative, JBF argued July 2 (JBF Bahrain v. United States, CIT # 23-00067).
The Court of International Trade on July 9 sustained CBP's finding that importers American Pacific Plywood, InterGlobal Forest and U.S. Global Forest evaded the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on plywood from China through Cambodian manufacturer LB Wood. Judge M. Miller Baker held that all that's required for liability to attach under the Enforce and Protect Act is "the entry of covered merchandise through any material false statement or material omission that avoids antidumping and countervailing duties, except those resulting from clerical errors," noting that even clerical errors are evasion if they are "part of a pattern of negligent conduct." The judge also held that CBP isn't precluded from finding that shipments from LB Wood are of Chinese origin in light of two other CIT cases the agency settled in which it said shipments from LB Wood are of Cambodian origin. Baker said the doctrine of judicial estoppel doesn't apply here, however, since CBP didn't succeed in advancing a position "directly inconsistent" with its theory in the present case, given that its initial position in the two settled cases was identical to its position here "but it then ran up the white flag."
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: