The Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 dismissed a steel importer's and purchaser's bid to reliquidate two entries subject to Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, saying the plaintiffs had already received the relief available to them from the Commerce Department in the form of a product exclusion but failed to preserve their ability to receive a refund by way of an extension of liquidation or a protest.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Aug. 16-20 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Aluminum Association's Section 232 working group recently met with Commerce Department and Office of U.S. Trade Representative staff “with a recommendation on how to navigate the ongoing aluminum tariff dispute between the U.S. and European Union,” it said in its weekly newsletter. The U.S. and the EU said in June they hoped to reach an agreement on Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum by year-end (see 2106150070). “Rather than a hard tariff rate quota (TRQ) to replace the 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports from the EU, the Aluminum Association is proposing that the tariff be gradually reduced until it reaches parity on a U.S./EU Most Favored Nation basis,” it said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representatively should allow for goods that were subject to Section 301 tariffs at the time of entry to a foreign-trade zone to be tariffed at whatever rate is in effect when the goods are removed from the FTZ, the National Associations of Foreign-Trade Zones said in a recent letter to the USTR. The trade group offered support for the suspension on Section 301 duties that were related to digital services taxes, and said that "the notices confirm the application of Sec. 301 duty rates in effect at the time of Customs entry for subject merchandise admitted into a U.S. foreign-trade zone (FTZ) in mandated privileged-foreign (PF) status."
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 2-8:
CBP's plans to extend the Part 102 marking rules from NAFTA to USMCA determinations of country of origin for nonpreferential claims and procurement under USMCA (see 2107010045) lacks the legal justifications needed to finalize the proposal, Novolex Holdings, a packaging conglomerate owned by the Carlyle Group, said in comments to the agency. "As proposed, such origin determinations would no longer abide by the precedent developed in over a century of determinations by the federal courts," the company said. The comments were posted Aug. 11 in the docket.
While grain-oriented electrical steel is subject to Section 232 tariffs, the domestic GOES producer says that electrical steel laminations and cores produced in Mexico and Canada continue to imperil the jobs at their mills. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., represent the workers at those mills, and they, along with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., have proposed an amendment to the bipartisan infrastructure bill that would instruct the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate with Canada and Mexico in order to get them to agree to measures curtailing their exports if they are so numerous that they damage the business of Cleveland-Cliffs.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 26 - Aug. 1:
After the Commerce Department released the outstanding Section 232 reports (see 2107290039), the lawyers for a vanadium exporter cheered the outcome. The Trump administration initiated a national security investigation into vanadium imports, but the Biden administration made the decision that vanadium imports do not threaten national security.
The Commerce Department posted its Section 232 investigation reports on whether national security is threatened by imports of vanadium, transformers and transformer inputs made from grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), titanium sponge and uranium. All the investigations were initiated under the Trump administration, but the most recently completed investigation on vanadium was finished after President Joe Biden took office (see 2103020027).