A California woman pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to Lacey Act violations and related charges of making false statements to CBP. Patty Chen, of Oakland, admitted to bringing in wildlife products including shark fins, shark fin noodles, sea horses, dried conch, dried fish and eel maw, valued at $29,760 from Ecuador into the United States. According to the June 2013 indictment in Florida Southern U.S. District Court, she twice arrived at Miami International Airport with wildlife, but declared on CBP form 6059B Customs Declaration that she was not transporting wildlife. The case was later transferred to the Northern California U.S. District Court, where Chen pleaded guilty. Chen, 67, is scheduled to be sentenced in May.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 24 gave a green light to refunds of antidumping and countervailing duty cash deposits collected during the investigations on utility scale wind towers from China. The domestic Wind Tower Trade Coalition had appealed from the Court of International Trade, after the lower court denied an injunction preventing liquidation of wind towers from China entered between June 6, 2012, and Feb. 12, 2013. CAFC agreed with the lower court’s decision, finding the lawsuit unlikely to succeed, and refused to grant a preliminary injunction putting liquidation on hold.
The Court of International Trade again affirmed the exception for finished heat sinks from antidumping duties on aluminum extrusions from China (A-570-967/C-570-968). Having already approved the International Trade Commission’s partial injury determination that led to the exception (see 12102228), CIT on Jan. 23 said the Commerce Department’s implementation in the scope of the orders was reasonable.
A law requiring interest on customs bonds that are subject to lawsuits for recovery of duties does not apply to antidumping duties, said the Court of International Trade in a Jan. 23 decision. Although 19 USC 580 requires interest on bonds when the “recovery of duties” is at stake, antidumping duties are separate from regular duties and were not intended to be included under the law when it was added to the books in 1799.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Jan. 21 upheld the conviction of the Chief Executive Officer of a medical device importer for making false statements to Food and Drug Administration officials. George John Schulte had been judged guilty by a Colorado U.S. District Court jury in March 2012 of lying to FDA officials to cover up his role in a scheme to test imported medical devices on human patients before they were granted FDA approval.
The Court of International Trade sustained the final results of the 2008-09 antidumping duty administrative review on polyethylene film, sheet, and strip from the United Arab Emirates, in a Jan. 8 decision recently released to the public. JBF RAK disputed the Commerce Department’s use of zeroing in the review, as well as its policy of issuing liquidation instructions 15 days after the final results of the review. CIT refused to hear either argument. The zeroing question has been resolved by other court cases, and JBF RAK failed to bring up the 15-day liquidation policy with Commerce during the review, as required by the principle of exhaustion of administrative remedies. The court also rejected JBF RAK’s challenge to Commerce’s calculation of its home market prices.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 rejected arguments from both sides in a customs valuation dispute between the government and an importer of apparel purchased from a related party. CIT ruled against the government’s defense of CBP’s use of transaction value, because it didn’t meet CBP’s own requirement of proof that prices were set according to normal industry pricing behavior. But the court also spurned claims by importer Macclenny Products that the entries of men’s suit jackets from Nicaragua should have instead been appraised using deductive value, because the company didn’t show that the related-party transaction actually affected the price.
A group purporting to represent consumers filed yet another class action lawsuit against Lumber Liquidators for high formaldehyde emissions from the company’s wood flooring products. The Jan. 14 complaint brought by four people in Alabama, Virginia, and New York who bought wood flooring products from Lumber Liquidators follows two other similar lawsuits filed in late November and early December (see 13120432).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Jan. 17 reversed the dismissal of a challenge to the ban on registered lobbyists serving on Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACs). The lawsuit from lobbyists representing several trade groups, including the National Retail Federation and the American Apparel & Footwear Association, argues the ban is unconstitutional because it encourages them to limit their First Amendment right to petition the government to be able to serve on the ITACs.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 15 sent back down the results of the 2009-10 antidumping duty administrative review on tapered roller bearings from China, ordering the Commerce Department to take another look at the rate it assigned to Changshan Peer Bearing. A change to the way Commerce valued some of the inputs Peer Bearing used to produce its bearings caused the companies AD rate to rise from 5.61% at the preliminary stage to 14.98% in the final results. CIT ruled that Commerce didn’t explain why it changed to the new data for valuing Peer Bearing’s inputs.