The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 2-8:
An importer may protest CBP’s exclusion of its redesigned product for patent infringement under a Section 337 exclusion order, the Court of International Trade said in a March 4 decision. The government argued that CBP’s exclusion of Wirtgen road milling machines was not protestable because CBP was simply enforcing the International Trade Commission’s exclusion order, and that the decision should have instead been raised with the ITC and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. But CIT, noting that the ITC in the underlying Section 337 investigation specifically declined to address the redesigned products, found that CBP acted on its own authority to exclude the road milling machines, and as a result its decision could be protested. The trade court denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case as outside its jurisdiction.
Clarification: Jeffrey Neely of Husch Blackwell is the lead attorney for J. Conrad and Metropolitan Staple in their respective lawsuits challenging Section 232 tariffs on “derivatives” (see 2003030048).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 24 - March 1:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 17-23:
Two tire importers in Miami face years in prison for their alleged failure to pay excise taxes on their tire imports, the Justice Department said in a Feb. 21 press release. Marco Parra and Eira Luces-Parra, a married couple who owned Road Plus Tire, allegedly collected excise taxes from some tire retailers that bought their imported tires, but failed to file an excise tax return. In other instances, they allegedly did not collect the taxes at all, instead obtaining false bills of lading claiming that the tires were exported so they could claim an excise tax credit. The two were indicted by a federal grand jury Feb. 20 in the South Florida U.S. District Court. If convicted, they face a maximum of five years in prison for each count, DOJ said.
Correction: The Justice Department did not admit that PrimeSource is likely to succeed on the merits in its challenge to Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum “derivatives,” as part of its agreement on a preliminary injunction temporarily stopping collection of the duties on entries from PrimeSource (see 2002200025).
Ford Motor Company recently filed a Supreme Court appeal of a case involving tariff engineering of Ford transit vans to obtain a lower rate for passenger vehicles. The automaker’s Feb. 13 petition for certiorari says the Supreme Court’s intervention is necessary to end uncertainty for U.S. importers caused by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s “doctrinally incoherent and erroneous precedent,” and to rectify the CAFC’s errant decision not to address certain arguments made by Ford at a lower court.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 10-16:
A challenge to Section 232 tariffs that began Feb. 8 on finished steel and aluminum products could proceed quickly, if the Court of International Trade approves a jointly proposed schedule filed Feb. 14 that would have written arguments in the case wrapped up by May. CIT a day earlier issued a preliminary injunction barring CBP from collecting the tariffs from the importer that filed the lawsuit, PrimeSource. Oman Fasteners has requested a similar injunction in a separate case, but as of press time the court had not ruled on the motion. The preliminary injunction for PrimeSource results from an agreement between the government and PrimeSource nine days after the lawsuit was filed.