CAFC Issues Pair of Mandates in CVD, Customs Cases
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 9 issued mandates in two cases: one from importer Nutricia North America on the classification of its medical food imports (see 2511170047) and the other in a countervailing duty case from exporter Kaptan Demir on the decision not to attribute subsidies provided to Kaptan's input supplier to Kaptan itself (see 2511170018) (Nutricia North America v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1436) (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
In the customs case, the CAFC held that Nutricia's medical foods are properly classified as "medicaments" and not as "food preparations." The court overruled the Court of International Trade's decision, which came to the opposite conclusion, finding that Nutricia's products are properly found to be medicaments under duty-free Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 3004.50.5040.
In the CVD case, which concerned the 2018 CVD administrative review on Turkish rebar, the court said the Commerce Department reasonably decided not to attribute subsidies provided to Nur Gemicilik, Kaptan's input supplier, to Kaptan. The court said the agency properly identified that the unprocessed steel scrap Nur provided Kaptan was a "common input" and that the agency didn't place undue weight on consideration of Nur's main business activity.