The Commerce Department stuck by its decision not to investigate the alleged off-peak sale of electricity for less than adequate remuneration and not to treat POSCO Plantec -- an affiliate of countervailing duty respondent POSCO -- as a cross-owned input supplier of POSCO. Submitting its remand results to the Court of International Trade on Jan. 31, Commerce said that the subsidy allegation over the provision of off-peak electricity "did not provide sufficient evidence of a benefit for Commerce to initiate on the allegation," and that the inputs provided by POSCO Planted were not mainly dedicated to downstream product production (Nucor Corp. v. United States, CIT # 21-00182).
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York opened and settled a case with vitamin and nutritional supplement importer International Vitamins Corp. (IVC) over the company's misclassification of its products to avoid paying customs duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Jan. 30. IVC will pay $22.87 million to the U.S. and admit to its conduct. The government joined its lawsuit with a whistleblower action filed under seal pursuant to the False Claims Act, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Sunnyvale Seafood has dropped two cases at the Court of International Trade concerning imported fish fillets brought in 2021, according to two separate motions filed Jan. 31. The cases challenged CBP's denial of Sunnyvale's protests over the applicability of Section 301 tariffs to its frozen tilapia fillets imported under subheading 0304.61.0000. Sunnyvale had argued that it should have been excluded from Section 301 tariffs via a product exclusion under subheading 9903.88.43. Sunnyvale did not comment when asked about the dismissals (SSC, Inc. v. United States, CIT # 21-00024, -00555).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
CBP announced that it is conducting an Enforce and Protect Act investigation on whether Fortress Iron (doing business as Fortress Fence Products and Fortess Building Products) evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on aluminum extrusions from China. According to the Jan. 24 notice, CBP found reasonable suspicion of evasion by Fortress and has imposed interim measures.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Jan. 26 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):
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Industrial shredders should be classified as "Other machines and mechanical appliances... other," dutiable at 2.5% rather than as duty-free machines for "mixing, kneading, crushing, grinding, screening, sifting, homogenizing, emulsifying or stirring,” argued the DOJ in a Jan. 25 cross-motion for summary judgment at the Court of International Trade (Vecoplan v. United States # 20-00126).