Importers who have paid tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act should look to affirmatively safeguard their right to receive refunds should the Supreme Court vacate in some form President Donald Trump's tariffs imposed under the statute, various law firms said. The attorneys issued the alerts in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to hear two cases on the legality of IEEPA tariffs on an expedited basis (see 2509090058).
The following lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. and surety firm Aegis Security Insurance moved to stay the government's case against Aegis to collect unpaid duties on entries of garlic imported in 2002, pending the government's appeal of a separate case against Aegis. The case on appeal concerns the Court of International Trade's decision finding that its claim for unpaid duties against a surety company on an entry liquidated in 2009 violates both the statute of limitations for seeking payment and an implied requirement in the bond that demand for payment be made in a reasonable amount of time (see 2508080056). In the case the parties are looking to stay, Aegis said the six-year statute of limitations to file a claim for unpaid duties runs from the date of liquidation of the underlying entries (see 2507020029) (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance, CIT # 25-00051).
Garlic importer Green Garden Produce said in a reply brief Sept. 10 that the Commerce Department never determined its garlic chunks in citric acid were expressly excluded by the scope of an antidumping duty order, instead moving straight on to a circumvention inquiry under the assumption the chunks were implicitly out-of-scope (Green Garden Produce v. United States, CIT # 24-00114).
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The government, namely CBP and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, should be stopped from denying the application of Section 301 China tariff exclusions to importer Mitsubishi Power Americas' selective catalytic reduction imports, Mitsubishi told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Filing its opening brief on Sept. 12, Mitsubishi said CBP and USTR "misrepresented the original grant of the exclusions to Mitsubishi" when they approved the requests, leading the importer to rely on these "misrepresentations to its detriment" (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1828).
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 15 sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand to replace existing Brazilian surrogate value information for antidumping duty respondent Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry's plywood input with Malaysian import data. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves upheld the move, which led to a slight drop in Senmao's AD rate to 14.35% from 16.17%, after no challenges to the remand results were received.
Saying that importer Lanxess’ chemicals were, on import, “intermediate components” rather than “supported catalysts,” the U.S. responded Sept. 12 to the importer’s motion for judgment with a cross motion (Lanxess Corporation v. United States, CIT # 23-00073).
The Commerce Department properly decided not to collapse an Italian antidumping duty respondent with its Romanian input supplier on the grounds that the input supplier isn't a "producer" of subject merchandise as defined by the AD statute, the Court of International Trade held on Sept. 15. Judge M. Miller Baker said Commerce's justification isn't impermissibly post hoc, despite the fact that it wasn't established during the challenged AD review, since the issue is "one of statutory construction."
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade: