The U.S. Senate on Feb. 5 confirmed the nomination of Joseph Laroski to serve as the next judge on the Court of International Trade. The nomination of Laroski, who most recently worked as a partner at antidumping and countervailing duty petitioners' firm Schagrin Associates, passed by a unanimous vote of 76-0.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 22 issued its mandate in a pair of cases seeking to retroactively apply Section 301 tariff exclusions. In the suits, the appellate court sustained the dismissal of the cases for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction, finding that a protest must have been filed with CBP to properly effectuate relief. The Court of International Trade initially said jurisdiction was not to be had under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, since the court would have had jurisdiction under Section 1581(a) had a protest been filed (see 2209060035). The Federal Circuit affirmed, finding that the true nature of the suits contests CBP's assessment of the duties and not the U.S. Trade Representative's decision to grant an exclusion, even though the exclusions were granted after the deadline for filing a protest had lapsed (ARP Materials v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2176) (The Harrison Steel Castings Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2177).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Jan. 9-10 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):
Greta Peisch is departing her job as general counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and USTR Katherine Tai announced Juan Millan will serve as acting general counsel. The general counsel position must be Senate-confirmed.
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