Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann extended until Nov. 21 his temporary restraining order barring the government from ending an exemption for bifacial panels from safeguard duties on solar cells, he said in an order issued Nov. 6. The temporary hold had been scheduled to expire Nov. 7, but Katzmann said he is still considering plaintiff Invenergy’s motion to amend an existing injunction to stop President Donald Trump’s Oct. 10 presidential proclamation on the safeguard duties from taking effect. The proclamation had provided for termination of the bifacial exemption effective Oct. 25, but was blocked by Katzmann’s temporary restraining order the day before it took effect (see 2010260025).
The U.S. government is moving too slowly in the processing of refunds of duties paid on imported steel from Turkey that were subject to additional Section 232 tariffs, Transpacific Steel said in a Nov. 4 filing with the Court of International Trade. Transpacific was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over the tariffs. A three-judge CIT panel ruled that the tariffs were improperly imposed because they were put in place after the statutory timelines for Section 232 tariffs (see 2007140046). A government appeal filed in September with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is awaiting a ruling.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 26 - Nov. 1:
The Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture action for two religious relics found in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in an Oct. 27 news release. The complaint involves “two 1,500-pound hand-carved decorative lintels” that came from ancient religious temples in Thailand. “The complaint alleges the Thai lintels became part of a large collection held by a noted collector of South and Southeast Asian art,” it said. “The collection was bequeathed to the City and County of San Francisco, which used the collection, including the lintels, for display in the Asian Art Museum.” A federal investigation began after a 2016 museum visit by the consul general of the Thai consulate in Los Angeles, who inquired about the provenance of the relics. Based on that investigation, Justice said the lintels were imported in the 1950s or 1960s “in violation of Thai law, i.e. without the requisite export documents, and as LINTELS 1 and 2 were the cultural property of Thailand, LINTELS 1 and 2 constitute stolen, smuggled, and/or clandestinely imported or introduced merchandise.” The museum didn't comment.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 19-25:
HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, the initial filers of the Section 301 litigation seeking to vacate the lists 3 and 4A tariff rulemakings and get the duties refunded, strongly oppose the Department of Justice’s prolonged briefing format and schedule proposed Oct. 19 in a motion for case management procedures (see 2010200022), Akin Gump said in a response Oct. 22 at the Court of International Trade. Under the government’s proposal, the parties would not begin to argue the “merits of this dispute” before 2022 or beyond, it said. “Given the ongoing harms to thousands of plaintiffs, among others, that protracted schedule is unacceptable.”
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 12-18:
The Court of International Trade on Oct. 16 struck down a two-year-old Commerce Department scope ruling that found steel branch outlets used in fire protection system are subject to antidumping duties on carbon steel butt-weld pipe fittings from China (A-570-814). Commerce had in September 2018 found branch fittings imported by Vandewater covered by AD duties, even though they only have a single welded connection, and are threaded on the other end (see 1810160069). CIT found Commerce failed to adequately explain itself, relying mostly on a previous scope ruling that doesn’t fully address the issue, and sent the scope ruling back down to Commerce for a fuller analysis.
A Texas-based pipe importer is suing its customs lawyers for malpractice after their alleged failure to advise it to file protests cost it $6 million, according to a complaint filed Oct. 6 in Southern Texas U.S. District Court. Allied Fitting says Steptoe & Johnson, and more precisely its main point of contact Thomas Trendl and firm customs lead Gregory McCue, did not tell the importer that it had to protest the reliquidation of some of its entries that the Commerce Department had preliminarily found subject to AD duties during an anti-circumvention inquiry. When Commerce reversed course in its final determination and found no circumvention, the protest deadline had already passed, so Allied was unable to get any refunds for the reliquidated entries, the complaint said. Steptoe, Trendl and McCue were made aware of the reliquidations, but did not communicate any new advice based on that information, the complaint says. “We will be filing in due course our detailed answer responding to these unfounded claims,” Trendl and McCue said by email on Oct. 14.
The Section 301 tariff rulemakings typified the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's “unreasoned decision making” that’s “impermissible” under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Consumer Technology Association argued in September 2018 comments on List 3 of the tariffs (see 1809070025) that draw strong parallels to the HMTX-Jasco litigation challenging lists 3 and 4A tariffs. CTA used Akin Gump to help draft the comments two years ago. It was where CTA first floated the idea of challenging the tariffs in court. The complaint Akin Gump drafted for CTA (see 2009220029) that the association never followed through on is seen as a template for the HMTX-Jasco litigation now ongoing.