CBP reversed an evasion determination against Scioto Valley Woodworking, after initially having found that Scioto had imported Chinese wooden cabinets and vanities by transshipment through Malaysia using adverse facts available. Upon review, CBP found the use of AFA was unwarranted and said evidence showed the manufacturer, Alno, could and did produce wooden cabinets and vanities in Malaysia.
Country of origin cases
The Commerce Department stuck with its use of the Cohen's d test as part of its effort to root out "masked" dumping in an antidumping review after adding certain academic literature to the record as instructed by the Court of International Trade. Submitting its remand results to the trade court June 27, Commerce said certain statistical assumptions -- normality of the distribution, equal variances and around the same sample size -- don't limit the agency's use of the d test, given that it used the entire population of data as opposed to a sample (Nexteel Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 18-00083).
The government incorrectly claimed that there are two separate jurisdictional paths for contesting Enforce and Protect Act decisions, appellants Ascension Chemicals, UMD Solutions, Crude Chem Technology and Glob Energy Corp. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (All One God Faith v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1078).
Antidumping respondents led by Z.A. Sea Foods (ZASF) mischaracterized the record when arguing in favor of the Court of International Trade's rejection of the Commerce Department's finding that ZASF's third country sales to Vietnam were not representative of the company's sales in the third country market, petitioner Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee said in a reply brief. The petitioner told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that the trade court illegally reweighed the evidence on ZASF's Vietnamese sales, usurping Commerce's authority in the AD review on frozen warmwater shrimp from India (Z.A. Sea Foods Private Ltd. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1469).
Canada's proposed "last sale" change to its customs valuation practice could present a host of problems for customs brokers, law firm Neville Peterson said in a blog post. If the regulatory change, which would require imports to be assessed duties according to the price of their "sale for export," is approved, brokers would have to examine resales to accurately file entries and would "no doubt be required to file many post-importation adjustments," the firm said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 22 order denied a bid for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in the suit on President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto derivative products. Judges Kimberly Moore, Pauline Newman, Alan Lourie, Timothy Dyk, Sharon Prost, Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen, Todd Hughes, Kara Stoll and Leonard Stark made the decision denying the petitioners, ruling that the mandate will be issued June 29 (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2066).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 21 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Court of International Trade on June 20 upheld CBP's finding that importer Skyview Cabinet USA evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on wooden cabinets and vanities from China. Judge Stephen Vaden said that, contrary to Skyview's claims, CBP adequately found that "contradictions, omissions, and inconsistencies" in the company's submissions were enough to find the data to not be credible and that the record backs the evasion findings against the firm.
The European Council dropped two names from its Democratic Republic of the Congo sanctions regime following a ruling from the EU General Court. The individuals, Kalev Mutondo and Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, were originally listed for obstructing the 2018 elections in the Congo, the council said June 19. In March, the General Court ruled that the council failed to adequately link Shadary and Mutondo and the security situation in the Congo.