The Commerce Department fixed an error in its liquidation instructions related to an antidumping duty review in its Oct. 15 remand results at the Court of International Trade. The remand was voluntarily requested by Commerce after it identified the error in the liquidation restrictions (Optima Steel International, LLC, et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00327).
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of International Trade should grant the Commerce Department's voluntary request for a remand in an antidumping case, so the agency can review whether it was appropriate to rely on supplemental questionnaire responses, seeing as it couldn't conduct an on-site verification, Commerce argued in an Oct. 18 brief (Ellwood City Forge Company, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00007).
The Court of International Trade issued two opinions in antidumping cases, one sustaining the Commerce Department's remand results, and another remanding certain issues back to the agency. The first decision concerned a challenge brought by Husteel to the 2016-17 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. As it has done many times before, the court had initially remanded Commerce's decision to make a particular market situation adjustment to Husteel's sales-below-cost test. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said this adjustment is not permissible under the law, so Commerce dropped it under protest, leading the judge to sustain the remand.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Electric scooters, known has hoverboards, were assessed duties under the wrong Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading upon entry into the U.S., importer 3BTech said in an Oct. 15 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Kicking off litigation in its customs battle, 3BTech argued that even if CBP's HTS subheading of choice is correct, the products were granted Section 301 China tariff exclusions (3BTech, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00159).
The Court of International Trade granted in part, and denied in part, the Department of Justice's motion to extend the discovery period in a customs classification dispute, in an Oct. 14 order. Ordering the parties to consult on potentially extending the discovery period to allow the U.S. to depose an expert witness at a time convenient to both parties, Judge Timothy Stanceu struck a compromise between DOJ's desire to take the deposition and the plaintiffs' claims that an extended discovery period would prejudice it.
The Court of International Trade granted the Department of Justice's motion to stay a case challenging the expansion of Section 232 duties on steel and aluminum “derivatives,” in an Oct. 14 order, due in part to the defendant's likelihood of succeeding on appeal. Finding that a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion indicates DOJ's chances of success at the appellate court, CIT also stayed any resulting liquidation but noted that the fact pattern in the present case reads differently from that of the recent Federal Circuit case.
The Court of International Trade ordered on Oct. 18 that the U.S. must serve amended answers to 25 of importer Greenlight Organic's requests for admission in a case over the importer's alleged misclassification of imports to skirt duties. Granting Greenlight's motion to compel in part and denying it in part, CIT said that the U.S. only has to respond to 25 of Greenlight's 116 RFAs. CIT found that the U.S. did not have to respond to a host of other RFAs related to the date of discovery of Greenlight's alleged fraud since RFAs are to be used to identify undisputed facts, and the date of discovery of the fraud is not undisputed, the court said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on Oct. 14 in a case affirming the Court of International Trade's rejection of excise tax drawback regulations. The Aug. 23 opinion held that CBP cannot limit the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes, finding that the CBP regulation defied the "clear intent of Congress" (see 2108230036). The decision struck down a 2018 rule that was issued as part of a broader overhaul of drawback regulations following the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (The National Association of Manufacturers, et al. v. Department of the Treasury, et al., CIT #19-00053).
The Commerce Department switched to finding the all-others rate in an antidumping duty review using a weighted average of the respondents' rates rather than a simple average, in Oct. 13 remand results at the Court of International Trade. Still defending its use of the simple average in other hypothetical circumstances, Commerce nevertheless made the switch to weighted average, using CBP entry data for one of the respondents (Pro-Team Coil Nail Enterprise, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #18-00027).