The Court of International Trade dismissed eight customs cases for lack of prosecution, noting that all cases were previously placed on the customs case management calendar but weren't removed "at the expiration of the applicable period of time of removal."
The Commerce Department doesn't fail to act when it denies a Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion request, the Court of International Trade held. Instead, the denial is a "decision" and "not an action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed," Judge Stephen Vaden said, dismissing a host of claims from importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA against Commerce's rejection of its exclusion requests.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 largely dismissed importer Prysmian Cables and Systems USA's suit challenging the Commerce Department's denial of its Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests. Judge Stephen Vaden said the company's claims that Commerce failed to act since it didn't perform three required actions for each denial fall short, since the agency didn't fail to act. A denial isn't an "action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed: It is a decision," the court said. The court also dismissed most of Prysmian's challenges to the denials as being arbitrary and capricious, finding them to have been brought beyond the applicable two-year statute of limitations for challenging Section 232 exclusion request denials.
In a complaint filed Jan. 15, steel wire exporter Tree Island said CBP erroneously assessed Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs on 11 of its entries (Tree Island Industries v. United States, CIT # 25-00019).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
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The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. Dec. 16 supported its motion to dismiss the amended complaint of aluminum rod importer Prysmian Cables and Systems, saying that the importer’s arguments failed to state a claim, aren’t subject to the “continuing violation doctrine” and don’t have a six-year statute of limitations (Prysmian Cables and Systems v. U.S., CIT # 24-00101).
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) improperly rejected 63 Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests filed by California-based importer Mirror Metals, the company argued in a Dec. 20 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Mirror Metals said that if BIS applied the standards laid out in its regulations, the "only reasonable conclusion" it could have drawn was that the company "cannot obtain the subject steel in the U.S. market in a sufficient quantity or quality, on a timely basis to replace the steel it currently imports" (Mirror Metals v. United States, CIT # 24-00260).
Importer Seneca Foods Corp. will appeal a Court of International Trade decision sustaining the Commerce Department's rejection of eight Section 232 steel tariff exclusion requests, the company said in a notice of appeal (see 2410240029). In the decision, the trade court found that the rejections were backed by substantial evidence and in line with agency practice. The court also sustained Commerce's focus on "prospective evidence of steel production" and rejected Seneca's claim that Commerce's approach gives "short shrift to course-of-dealing evidence" that suggests that an objecting U.S. company won't actually deliver the goods (Seneca Foods Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00243).