The U.S. on Feb. 28 defended the Commerce Department’s continued use on remand of German third-country comparison market data for an antidumping duty investigation on Dutch-origin mushrooms. It said Commerce had adopted a presumption that actually favored petitioner Giorgio Foods, despite Giorgio's opposition to the new results (Giorgio Foods v. United States, CIT # 23-00133).
The Commerce Department placed an "undue emphasis on prefabrication" in a scope ruling on pencils in violation of its own regulations and case law, importer School Specialty said in a Feb. 27 brief at the Court of International Trade. Responding to claims from the U.S. and petitioner Dixon Ticonderoga Co., School Specialty said Commerce's "unreasonable fixation on 'prefabrication'" led the agency to "misjudge the true complexity and importance of the processing that occurs in the Philippines" (School Specialty v. United States, CIT # 24-00098).
Exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret and petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition each contested an element of the Commerce Department's remand results in a case on the 2020 review of the countervailing duty order on Turkish rebar. In comments to the Court of International Trade laying out their disagreements, Kaptan challenged Commerce's use of a report from Colliers International as a benchmark in assessing the benefit Kaptan derived from the provision of land for less than adequate remuneration, while the coalition challenged the agency's finding that exemptions from Turkey's Banking Insurance and Transaction Tax were neither de jure nor de facto specific (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 23-00131).
Wooden cabinet importers referring to themselves as Cabinetworks Companies made a number of arguments Feb. 26 opposing a Commerce Department scope ruling, culminating in an attack on the department’s country-wide antidumping and countervailing duty determinations (ACProducts v. United States, CIT #s 24-00155, -00156).
CBP didn't need to refer the question of whether petitioner CP Kelco still made oilfield xanthan gum to the Commerce Department in an antidumping duty evasion case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Feb. 27. Judges Kimberly Moore, Todd Hughes and Tiffany Cunningham said the evidence didn't support such a referral and, in any case, such a referral would only apply to future merchandise and not the goods subject to the evasion case.
Three importers found to have evaded antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on Chinese glycine told the Court of International Trade that CBP has failed to offer any evidence of direct evasion of the orders. The importers, Newtrend USA, Starille and Nutrawave Co., said in a brief last week that all three categories of evidence relied on by CBP amount to "nothing more than speculation" (Newtrend USA Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00347).
Ray Hunt, an Alabama resident and business owner, was sentenced this week to five years in prison after pleading guilty in July to conspiring to illegally export U.S.-origin goods to Iran, DOJ announced. The agency said Hunt conspired to ship parts used in the oil and gas industry to Iran and submitted false export information to the U.S. government (see 2211300011). He worked around U.S. restrictions by using third-party transshipment companies in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, routing payments through UAE banks, and lying to shipping companies about how much the exports were worth to stop them from filing export information in the Automated Export System.
Importer Outokumpu Stainless Steel brought a Feb. 20 complaint to the Court of International Trade alleging CBP had wrongly failed to correct the country of origin designated on 173 of its entries, resulting in the importer being assessed Section 232 tariffs (Outokumpu Stainless USA v. United States, CIT # 25-00047).
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The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on Feb. 21 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):