The Court of International Trade on March 18 dismissed a lawsuit filed by Wheatland Tube Company seeking to compel CBP to respond to requests for information and issue a tariff classification ruling, finding CBP provided the information it was required to by law. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that CBP provided the information and that the agency was correct to say that the requests for information weren't proper.
A customs lawsuit is set to enter the second phase of its bench trial to find whether importer SGS Sports' apparel qualifies for duty-free treatment, the Court of International Trade said in a March 21 opinion. SGS entered swimsuits under a duty-free special classification provision after first shipping them to Canada for warehousing at a supposedly related company's warehouse. The first phase of the trial was set up to find whether this warehousing agreement is a lease or similar use agreement. Finding the agreement to be a lease or similar use agreement, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves's decision allows the trial to proceed to the next phase, which will be to determine if the swimsuits qualify for duty-free treatment under HTS subheading 9801.00.20.
The Court of International Trade on March 21 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in a challenge brought by The Ancientree Cabinet Co. to the antidumping duty investigation of wooden cabinets and vanities from China. Judge Gary Katzmann upheld Commerce's financial ratio calculations after the agency provided more explanation on remand..
Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps should not be allowed to amend its complaint since the case cannot be amended to claim jurisdiction over a denied protest after the 180-day window to file a challenge has lapsed, the Justice Department said in a March 18 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The U.S. also contested Dr. Bronner's motion since it sought to only amend the complaint and not the summons (All One God Faith v. United States, CIT Consol. #20-00164).
Chinese exporter JA Solar International's sales were destined for the U.S., and the Commerce Department was wrong to exclude the sales in an antidumping duty review, the exporter argued in a brief to the Court of International Trade. As evidence, JA cited respondent Inventec Solar Energy Corporation's (ISEC's) questionnaire responses showing its knowledge that the sales were meant for the U.S., corroborating evidence from ISEC on this point and evidence from JA Solar supporting ISEC's admissions of knowledge (JA Solar International Limited v. United States, CIT #21-00514).
The Commerce Department's decision to deem countervailable exporter Dongbu Steel's debt-for-equity swaps was unsupported, and violated the agency's own standard practice of not reexamining subsidy programs that were previously found non-countervailable without any new information, Dongbu Steel said in a March 17 complaint at the Court of International Trade (KG Dongbu Steel Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00047).
Judicial Conference Makes Changes to Judges' Financial Disclosure Reports, Conflict Screening Policy
The Judicial Conference voted to automate the release of judges' financial disclosure reports in a bid to increase transparency, federal courts announced March 15. Approving the new measures at its biannual meeting, the policymaking body also discussed ongoing efforts to establish an online platform to release judges' financial disclosure reports. The online system will include features needed for filing and redacting these reports, along with the feature of automating their release.
The Commerce Department ignored the Court of International Trade's and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's instructions when it continued to rely on the "likely selling price" of non-prime goods to set rates in an antidumping duty case, exporter AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke said in a March 15 brief responding to Commerce's remand results. Dillinger says the agency continued to use facts otherwise available even after the trade court ruled it unsupported, arguing Commerce must instead use the company's actual data (AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke v. United States, CIT Consol. #17-00158).
Imported net wrap should be classified in Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 8433 as part of harvesting machinery under subheading 8433.90.50 or agricultural machinery under heading 8436, rather than as textile material under heading 6005, RKW Klerks said in a motion filed March 15 at the Court of International Trade. RKW argued that the imported netwrap is "only used in harvesting machinery to produce round bales of hay, silage and fodder," a function that is "fixed with certainty at the time of importation" (RKW Klerks Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00001).
Antidumping duty respondents Best Mattresses International Company's and Rose Lion Furniture Company's challenge of the Commerce Department's differential pricing analysis should be tossed since the DPA did not injure the plaintiffs, DOJ said in a March 11 brief at the Court of International Trade. Since the DPA ultimately found that no "masked" dumping was occurring, the use of the analysis, which is based on a statistical test called into question by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year, did not give Best Mattresses and Rose Lion any standing to challenge it, the U.S. argued (Best Mattresses International Company v. United States, CIT Consol. #21-00281).