Pistol maker Glock sued the U.S. at the Court of International Trade Jan. 16, saying CBP, upon liquidation of Glock’s imports, erroneously failed to deduct Glock’s royalty payments from the imports’ value calculation (Glock v. U.S., CIT # 23-00046).
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 16 sent back CBP's finding that importer Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu said CBP, in both the final evasion decision and an administrative review of the decision, committed "multiple errors, both of fact and of law." The judge said CBP didn't have evidence on its side in making the evasion finding, nor did it properly initiate the investigation.
Importer Bral Corp. and the U.S. settled a customs case on the company's entries of allegedly defective plywood, according to a Jan. 16 stipulation of dismissal, but didn't make the settlement public. The company declined to comment on the terms of the settlement (Bral Corp. v. United States, CIT # 20-00154).
The Commerce Department lowered all Moroccan phosphate fertilizer exporters’ countervailing duty rates from 19.97% to 7.41% in its final redetermination on remand of the final determination in a CVD investigation. However, it refused to reverse a finding that a Moroccan government program granting reductions in tax fines and penalties was de facto specific to the investigation’s sole respondent (The Mosaic Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 21-00116).
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's decision to accept antidumping duty respondent Oman Fasteners' supplemental questionnaire response after initially rejecting it for being submitted 16 minutes late. Judge M. Miller Baker, in a Jan. 5 opinion made public Jan. 16, nodded to his prior opinion in the case, in which he held that the rejection of the submission was "the very definition of abuse of discretion" (see 2307170036). The result was a zero percent dumping margin for the exporter.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 16 rejected the Commerce Department's finding that importer Columbia Aluminum Products' door thresholds evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu said CBP's final evasion determination and administrative review of the final decision contained "multiple errors, both of fact and of law." For instance, CBP pointed to no evidence showing that Columbia received aluminum door thresholds from China, transshipped the thresholds from China through Vietnam or falsely declared the country of origin as Vietnam instead of China. Stanceu added that CBP erroneously relied on a 2019 anti-circumvention proceeding, which applies only to aluminum extrusions exported from Vietnam made from aluminum previously extruded in China.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Steel nail importer Hilti dismissed its case at the Court of International Trade following the Supreme Court's decision not to review a case on President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 duties onto steel and aluminum "derivative" products. The high court's decision marked the sixth time the court has declined to address whether Trump legally expanded the duties beyond procedural deadlines (see 2401080037). Hilti stayed its case pending resolution of the case rejected by the Supreme Court (Hilti, Inc. v. United States, CIT # 21-00216).
A frozen fruit importer appealed Jan. 11 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit seeking to overturn the Court of International Trade’s May 30 ruling that 14 types of its fruit mixtures should be classified as “other” frozen fruits, not “food preparations not elsewhere specified,” under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (Nature's Touch Frozen Foods (West) v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-2093).
The U.S. asked the Court of International Trade on Jan. 9 to bar a wristwatch importer from using any materials the importer provided the government in its supplement to a document production request, saying it had been untimely (Ildico Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 18-00136).