The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department must "find a practical solution" to verify information from countervailing duty respondents' U.S. customers that shows that they did not use China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, the Court of International Trade said in an opinion released May 20. Adding to a long line of CIT opinions striking down Commerce's use of adverse facts available over the EBCP, Judge Richard Eaton said that the agency can either find a solution to verify the non-use of the program on the record or recalculate the CVD rates for the two mandatory respondents, Dalian Meisen and Ancientree, without using the subsidy rate for the EBCP.
The Court of International Trade dismissed two cases brought by steel importer Voestalpine USA and steel purchaser Bilstein Cold Rolled Steel seeking to retroactively apply a Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion that was originally issued with a clerical error. Judge Mark Barnett said that the plaintiffs did not seek any relief that the court could grant since the entries eligible for the exclusion had already been liquidated, and the court does not have the power to order their reliquidation.
The Court of International Trade should rehear its decision on whether a Warehousing Agreement between two related companies sufficed as a lease or similar use agreement since it failed to address one of the U.S.'s arguments that the two entities are not separate but merely a single entity, DOJ argued in an April 20 motion for rehearing (SGS Sports v. United States, CIT #18-00128).
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the higher 35% duty rate for tuna salad pouches imported by StarKist in a March 30 opinion, siding with CBP's preferred Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification. The Court of International Trade first sided with CBP, upholding the agency's finding that the tuna salad pouches are "not minced" and "in oil." The Federal Circuit agreed with the trade court and said that the pouches are indeed not minced and in oil, prompting their placement under HTS subheading 1604.14.10.
The Court of International Trade ruled in a March 21 opinion that a customs spat over reimported swimsuits will head to phase two of trial. After sorting through whether a Warehousing Agreement between two related companies sufficed as a lease or similar use agreement during the first phase, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ruled that this condition was satisfied for classification under a duty-free tariff provision for U.S. goods returned. The court will now see if the remaining conditions are satisfied in order to grant SGS Sports duty-free treatment of the reimported swimwear.
The Court of International Trade should deny the U.S.'s motion to dismiss a case from Wheatland Tube Co. seeking to compel CBP to respond to requests for information and a tariff classification ruling, Wheatland said in a March 9 reply brief. DOJ had said the trade court should toss the case, in part, since it already responded to the RFI and petition for a tariff classification. Wheatland disagreed, arguing that CBP's limited response failed to meet the requirements of Section 1516 which mandates that CBP "furnish the classification and the rate of duty imposed upon designated imported merchandise" (Wheatland Tube Company v. United States, CIT #22-00004).
A pair of complaints at the Court of International Trade, one filed by Calgon Carbon and the other by Carbon Activated Tianjin, argue that the Commerce Department picked the wrong surrogate data in a recent administrative review of the antidumping duty order on activated carbon from China (Calgon Carbon Corporation v. U.S., CIT #22-00025) (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. v. U.S., CIT #22-00017).
The Court of International Trade denied Wheatland Tube Company's bid for a preliminary injunction in a case seeking to compel CBP to respond to requests for information and a tariff classification ruling relating to Section 232 evasion since Wheatland has not shown a likelihood to succeed on the merits. CBP already responded to Wheatland's requests, so the plaintiff has not shown how it could succeed in the case, Judge Timothy Stanceu said.