Russell Semmel, former Arent Fox attorney, joined international law firm Bryan Cave's New York office as counsel in the International Trade Practice, the firm announced Aug. 30. With more than a decade of experience, Semmel will continue to advise importers on issues of “tariff classification and valuation; free trade agreements and preference programs; country of origin and marking; drawback; seizures and forfeitures; civil customs penalties; antidumping and countervailing duties; and other laws and regulations enforced by" CBP, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission, Bryan Cave said.
Operations including the oiling of a machine, the fitting of a transformer to adjust electrical voltage and the uploading of software patches to a machine tool do not constitute manufacturing or use, and do not render the machine tool ineligible for unused merchandise drawback, CBP said in a recent ruling. The operations do not transform the machine tools into a new product but merely make them operational for the end customer, CBP told Knuth Machine in HQ H290897, issued July 28 and publicly released Aug. 26.
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The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Aug. 26 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the Court of International Trade's rejection of CBP regulations that limit the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes, the CAFC said in a ruling. "We conclude that the expansive definition in the Rule, which extends drawback to situations in which tax is never paid or determined, conflicts with the unambiguous text of the statute," said the CAFC.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Aug. 17 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
In one of his first actions as a CIT judge, Chief Judge Mark Barnett was handed a case reassigned from one of the court’s senior judges at the time, Judge R. Kenton Musgrave. The case, involving a duty drawback claim from BP Oil Supply Company, was filed in July 2004 and had languished in the court for years. Lengthy briefing schedules and a million motions to extend later, it had been nearly a decade since the initial complaint had been filed.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated July 22 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):