The following trade-related lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade asked parties in nine cases challenging the Commerce Department's circumvention investigation on solar cells from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for a briefing on whether a test case should be designated. In a Jan. 19 order, Judge M. Miller Baker bifurcated the motion for summary judgment procedure for a joint status report and proposed briefing schedule. All parties were asked to submit a joint status report no later than Feb. 9 to answer the question on consolidation (Auxin Solar v. United States, CIT # 23-00221, -00222, -00223, -00224, -00225, -00226, -00227, -00228, -00229).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 16 vacated its judgment in a customs case brought by Jing Mei Automotive (USA) under the court's Rule 60(a), which allows the court to correct clerical mistakes or mistakes stemming from oversight or omission. The judgment denied Jing Mei's motion for summary judgment and addressed four different categories of the importer's car parts. The court's Jan. 16 order didn't identify the clerical error (Jing Mei Automotive (USA) v. United States, CIT # 13-00321).
The Commerce Department on Jan. 24 dropped exporter Hyundai Steel Co.'s countervailing duty rate to a de minimis mark on remand in a suit contesting the rate applicable to Hyundai's usage rights for the North Incheon Harbor in South Korea. The agency said at the Court of International Trade that it considered the exporter's "construction costs in the benefit calculation," though it disagreed that the construction costs should be considered at all (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 21-00304).
CBP, on remand at the Court of International Trade, reversed its finding that importers Norca Industries Co. and International Piping & Procurment Group's imported carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings evaded the antidumping duty order on the pipe fittings from China (Norca Industrial v. United States, CIT # 21-00192).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 25 denied a U.S. motion to dismiss a customs case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, finding a protest with CBP was not needed for importer Fraserview Remanufacturing's 80 entries that were deemed liquidated despite a Commerce Department order suspending liquidation. Judge Timothy Reif said that because the statute for deemed liquidation requires the entries to not be suspended, the notices of deemed liquidation did not actually liquidate the entries. As a result, relief at the court was not available under Section 1581(a) but was available under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction.
The U.S. said Jan. 24 at the Court of International Trade that it was seeking more than $193 million in unpaid antidumping duties from German company Koehler Oberkirch, formerly known as Papierfabrik August Koehler (U.S. v. Koehler Oberkirch GmbH, CIT # 24-00014).
No trade-related lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 22 denied Nebraska resident Byungmin Chae's petition for a rehearing of his petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of a question on his 2018 customs broker license exam. The decision marks the end of his legal remedies -- a process that saw Chae, mostly representing himself, take the case through multiple rounds of appeal at CBP, the Court of International Trade, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court (Byungmin Chae v. Janet Yellen, U.S. Sup. Ct. # 23-200).
Importer Hanon Systems Alabama dismissed at the Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 its lawsuit challenging the Commerce Department's finding that it's circumventing the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum foil from China by way of South Korea and Thailand (Hanon Systems Alabama Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00269).