CBP's process for carrying out Enforce and Protect Act investigations could eventually be found by the courts to be unconstitutional, trade lawyers Jen Diaz and David Craven of Diaz Trade Law said during an April 21 webinar. The EAPA investigations, which seek to determine if a company evaded antidumping or countervailing duty orders, are mostly secret and do not inform entities if they are being investigated or what evidence stands against them.
EAPA Litigation
Under the Enforce and Protect Act, CBP investigates whether a company is evading particular antidumping and countervailing duty orders. Litigation on determinations made under the relatively new statute have centered on due process protections for respondents, CBP's evidentiary basis for its decisions and the interplay of decisions made on the scope of the applicable AD/CVD orders from both CBP and the Commerce Department. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a key decision for all EAPA cases in Royal Brush Manufacturing v. United States, when it found CBP to have violated a respondent's due process protections by failing to provide it with access to the business proprietary information used in the proceeding.