The Court of International Trade ruled that a shipment of 443 bales of secondhand clothing imported by DIS Vintage should be classified as "commingled goods" and subject to the "highest rate of duty for any part thereof," siding with the government in a May 17 opinion. Judge Timothy Reif, after examining samples of the goods, determined that some were not classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 6309 as "worn clothing and other worn articles" since they had no visible signs of appreciable wear. Instead, some were classified as cotton trousers of subheading 6203.42.40, dutiable at 16.6%, which as the highest rate of duty for the 443 bales applies to the entire shipment of commingled goods under General Note 3(f)(i).
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 14 upheld the Court of International Trade's decision to reject the Commerce Department's duty drawback adjustment methodology for an Indian exporter in an antidumping duty investigation on corrosion-resistant steel products. Rather than follow its normal method of adjusting only the export price for drawback received by the exporter, Commerce in the investigation adjusted the exporter's overall costs of production, including for home market goods, resulting in a higher AD duty rate. Like CIT, the Federal Circuit held the broader allocation ran afoul of the relevant statute, which only requires an adjustment to export price.
The Court of International Trade remanded for a second time an antidumping case on certain off-the-road tires from China, ruling that the Commerce Department failed to provide enough evidence that two respondents were under de facto government control and not warranting of an individual AD rate. Commerce had found in an administrative review that the Chinese government controlled export functions for exporters Aeolus Tyre and Guizhou Tyre Co., assigning them a 105.31% rate as part of the China-wide entity.
The Court of International Trade sustained remand results in an antidumping investigation over whether a sale of steel flanges from an Indian exporter should be excluded from the home market sales database when determining the antidumping duty margin.
The Court of International Trade on May 11 sustained on the second remand the Commerce Department’s 2016-17 antidumping duty administrative review on activated carbon from China.
The Court of International Trade will allow a customs broker test-taker to proceed with a challenge to his failing grade, denying a motion to dismiss from the government that argued his case didn’t meet procedural requirements. Byungmin Chae’s delay in appealing to the trade court was caused in part by CBP’s own misleading statements, and his early missteps in the case before hiring a lawyer should not bar him from a hearing in court, CIT said in a decision May 7.
Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton issued opinions for two antidumping and countervailing cases, sustaining the second remand results in one and remanding the application of adverse facts available in another.
Negative injury determinations that ended antidumping duty investigations on polyethylene terephthalate resin from Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan in 2018 will stand, after the Court of International Trade sustained a remand redetermination from the International Trade Commission that provided further explanation of the ITC’s decisions without any changes to the end result.
The Court of International Trade issued two decisions related to the application of adverse facts available in antidumping duty proceedings on solar cells from China and cold-rolled steel flat products from South Korea shipped through Vietnam.
The Court of International Trade in recent days issued two decisions involving antidumping and countervailing duty administrative reviews. On May 3, CIT granted the Commerce Department’s request to reopen its 2016-17 antidumping duty administrative review on circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from South Korea. Commerce had requested remand of the final results because a CIT decision issued in a separate case in December 2020 ruled against the agency’s application of a particular market situation finding under similar circumstances.