Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Royal Brush Manufacturing v. U.S., which found that CBP violated importer Royal Brush's due process rights by not giving it access to business confidential information in an antidumping and countervailing duty evasion proceeding, "may have broader implications," including on forced labor issues, customs lawyer Lawrence Friedman said in a July 28 blog post. If the decision "applies generally, it may require that" CBP make its record fully available, including BCI, which would be an "interesting unintended consequence" of this Enforce and Protect Act case, Friedman said.
The lack of disclosure in Enforce and Protect Act evasion proceedings and the deferential standard of review "stack the deck" in favor of the alleger, giving importers "a lot to complain about in the EAPA process," customs lawyer Larry Friedman of Barnes/Richardson said in a July 6 blog post. Even importers who believe they have conducted reasonable due diligence may have serious unexpected liabilities that come out during the investigation, he said.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated May 1 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 Commerce Department's discretion to decide whether to reopen the record on remand in antidumping duty proceedings "extends to placing surrogate value information on the record, with no restriction that such surrogate values can only be submitted to the record if strictly necessary," exporters Ningbo Master International Trade Co. and Guangzhou Jingye Machinery Co. argued. Submittting comments to the Court of International Trade, the exporters defended Commerce's decision to use Mexican International Labour Organization (ILO) data to value labor in the antidumping duty investigation on refillable stainless steel kegs from China (New American Keg v. United States, CIT # 20-00008).
While the Commerce Department complied with the Court of International Trade's remand instructions to reconsider the application of a Brazilian consumer price index (CPI) to a Mexican labor rate, the agency still used "unsupported and arbitrary justifications" to back its refusal to use Brazilian labor data in an antidumping duty case, plaintiff American Keg Co. argued. Filing comments on Commerce's remand results on Jan. 26 at the trade court, the plaintiff claimed that Commerce abused its discretion by using Mexican International Labour Organization (ILO) data that appears to not have been available at the time of the investigation (New American Keg v. United States, CIT # 20-00008).
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
A recent Court of International Trade case that dealt with goods excluded over forced labor concerns ended "with a whimper," leaving the trade bar without any answers on how to challenge CBP forced labor detentions, Crowell & Moring lawyers wrote in a Dec. 29 blog post. Attorneys John Brew, Laurel Saito and Wing Cheung said that while the "importing community was hoping for such guidance," it will be forced to wait as it is "unlikely" that the plaintiff, Virtus Nutrition,will appeal the matter.
Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 15 dismissed a case seeking the release of goods excluded over forced labor concerns without plaintiff Virtus Nutrition's proposed condition that CBP allow the goods to be reexported. Judge Timothy Reif said the temporary storage agreement under which the goods are currently being held does not give a basis to include the proposed stipulation. Virtus "retains recourse" to address its concern that CBP can seize the goods rather than allow their exportation, Reif said.