President Donald Trump didn't clearly misconstrue the statute when he revoked a Section 201 tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Nov. 13. Granting the president wider discretion to make modifications to Section 201 duties, Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark said that the statute -- Section 2254(b)(1)(B) of the Trade Act of 1930 -- allows for trade-restricting modifications, as opposed to only trade-liberalizing ones.
Country of origin cases
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Exporter Midwest-CBK will appeal a May 2022 Court of International Trade decision, which said that sales from a Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are sales "for exportation to the United States" instead of "domestic sales." After losing on this claim last year, the case shifted to an inquiry into the value of the goods. Midwest-CBK said that, due to its business model, it couldn't litigate this issue, and so it made the decision to ditch this claim so it could appeal its original argument (see 2310200054). Per its Nov. 8 notice of appeal, the exporter will take its suit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Midwest-CBK v. United States, CIT # 17-00154).
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 8 upheld a Commerce Department scope ruling that importer Valeo North America's T-series aluminum sheet is covered by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on common alloy aluminum sheet from China. Judge Mark Barnett sustained Commerce's consideration of and weight applied to various industry evidence along with its detailed discussion of heat treatment.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Commerce Department arbitrarily rejected arguments from Canadian softwood lumber exporter Resolute FP Canada -- despite a "good cause" showing by Resolute -- when it found the company would be likely to continue dumping, in the final results of a sunset review, Resolute said in its Nov. 6 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade (Resolute FP Canada v. U.S., CIT # 23-00095).
CBP announced it began a formal Enforce and Protect Act investigation on whether U.S. importer Besttn Industry evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on cast iron soil pipe and fittings from China and has imposed interim measures due to reasonable suspicion that Besttn entered covered merchandise.
CBP abused its discretion by ignoring explicit antidumping and countervailing duty scope language when it found that importer and AD/CVD petitioner Pitts Enterprises evaded the AD/CVD orders on chassis and subassemblies thereof from China, Pitts argued in a Nov. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The importer admitted to integrating Chinese axle and landing gear leg components into finished chassis shipments, which were finished in Vietnam, but it said individual Chinese components were "explicitly removed from the scope" (Pitts Enterprises v. U.S., CIT # 23-00234).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The "true nature" of a case brought by Turkish exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari (Erdemir) is to challenge the International Trade Commission's finding on non-negligiblity in the underlying antidumping duty investigation on hot-rolled steel from Turkey, despite Erdemir's insistance that the challenge is to the ITC's decision not to hold a reconsideration proceeding, a group of defendant-intervenors led by Cleveland-Cliffs said in their Nov. 3 reply at the Court of International Trade (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. U.S. International Trade Commission, CIT # 22-00349).