A penalty action against the owner and director of importer Atria, Kevin Ho, should not be dismissed even though the U.S. served his counsel with the wrong summons and complaint, the Department of Justice said in an Aug. 17 reply brief. Rather, the court should grant the DOJ's motion to expand Ho's time of service, allow Ho to stipulate to his liability in line with his guilty plea in a related criminal case, grant DOJ's motion to consolidate the two actions against Ho and stay the consolidated matter until Ho serves his prison sentence, the brief said (United States v. Chu-Chiang "Kevin" Ho, et al., CIT #19-00038).
The Commerce Department did not violate the law when it included sample sales of quartz surface products from Pokarna Engineered Stone Limited (PESL) in an antidumping investigation, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 25 order. Judge Leo Gordon said that there is nothing in the statute that requires Commerce to perform a bona fide sales analysis on paid U.S. sample sales during an investigation. "It should go without saying that, without a legal requirement that Commerce perform such an analysis, there is no basis for the court to issue an affirmative injunction that Commerce must conduct a bona fide sales analysis on PESL’s paid U.S. sample sales," the judge said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Apple and Intel were the two heavy hitters joining the Section 301 litigation Aug. 20, when two dozen complaints in total were filed at the Court of International Trade seeking to vacate the lists 3 and 4A tariffs on Chinese goods and get the duties refunded. It was the highest volume of complaints filed on a single day since early in the litigation that will be a year old Sept. 10. Aug. 20 marked two years after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative published its Federal Register notice imposing List 4A tariffs (see 2108190063). Court rules require plaintiffs to begin an action within two years “after the cause of action first accrues.” Intel “timely filed this action with respect to any entry of merchandise on which List 4A duties have been assessed, and any entry of merchandise on which List 3 duties were not definitively assessed before August 20, 2019,” the chipmaker’s complaint said, using language typical in the others filed the same day. Importers will likely argue alternatively in complaints yet to come that their two-year clocks started when List 4A took effect Sept. 1, 2019, or when they paid their first tariffs or their customs entries reached liquidation.
CBP deprived Norca Industrial Company of its due process rights and engaged in "unlawful speculation" when finding that Norca evaded antidumping duties, the company said in its motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. Another in a long line of importers to challenge the constitutionality of the Enforce and Protect Act process, Norca argued that CBP failed to grant it proper access to the record evidence during the investigation and based its determination on allegations of document discrepancies that the agency never gave the importer a chance to explain (Norca Industrial Company, LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00192).
The U.S. partially opposed Ashley Furniture Industries' motion for an open-ended statutory injunction against the liquidation of its mattress imports, saying that the injunction should only run to the end of the first antidumping administrative review period. Making its case in the Court of International Trade, the U.S. said that Ashley failed to show that it will suffer immediate and irreparable harm for its mattress entries made after April 30, 2022 -- the date that "corresponds to the end of the period of review for the first administrative review" (Ashley Furniture Industries, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00283).
CBP cannot limit the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an Aug. 23 opinion upholding the Court of International Trade's ruling. Holding that the CBP regulation defied the "clear intent of Congress," the appellate court ruled against the government appeal of CIT's decision, providing a win for the plaintiffs, the National Association of Manufacturers and The Beer Institute.
The Court of International Trade ruled that Logitech's webcams and ConferenceCams shall be classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8517, receiving duty-free treatment. In an Aug. 24 ruling, Judge Leo Gordon applied a use analysis to the webcams and ConferenceCams to determine if they belonged under subheading 8517, as Logitech suggested, or subheading 8525, dutiable at 2.1%, as the government suggested. Ultimately finding that the goods fit under both headings, Gordon went with 8517 as the proper classification for the products since it describes them "with a greater degree of accuracy and certainty."
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A Spanish exporters association moved to stay proceedings in one of its Court of International Trade cases pending the resolution of another one of its CIT cases, both concerning countervailing duty administrative reviews on ripe olives from Spain. The case the association moved to stay concerns the first administrative review, and shares much of the same fact pattern in the other case, Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa et al v. United States. The association believes staying the case would narrow the issues for the court to decide on, specifically "(i) whether Commerce’s interpretation and application of Section 771B of the Tariff Act of 1930 was lawful with respect to the attribution of grower subsidies to processors of the subject merchandise; and (ii) whether Commerce’s interpretation and application of Section 771(5A)(D)(i) of the Tariff Act of 1930 was lawful in relation to BPS and Greening support payments." Both the U.S. and the defendant-intervenor Musca Family Olive Company stated that they do not oppose the motion (Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa et al v. United States, CIT #21-00338).