Country of origin cases

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 Aug. 3 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 growth in the number of antidumping and countervailing duty orders enforced by CBP in recent years appears to be continuing, said Elizabeth Teague, an analyst at CBP, who spoke during a CBP Detroit Trade Week event on Aug. 3. "In Fiscal Year 2020, CBP began to enforce 45 new AD/CVD orders," she said. "So far in 2021, we are outpacing that number and have begun enforcing an additional 83 AD/CVD orders just this year." As of July, there were 625 active AD/CVD orders on 191 products from 59 countries, with China being the most frequently named country of origin, she said. Over half of all the AD/CVD orders involve steel or steel-related products, Teague said.

The following are short summaries of recent CBP “NY” rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:

The Trump administration’s “radical escalation” of Section 301 tariffs on lists 3 and 4A Chinese goods “transgressed the statutory limits carefully delineated by Congress” when it crafted the 1974 Trade Act and delegated foreign-trade powers to the executive branch, Akin Gump lawyers for sample case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products said. This came in a cross-motion for judgment on the agency record filed the evening of Aug. 2 at the Court of International Trade in docket 1:21-cv-52. Akin Gump’s proposed order asks that the lists 3 and 4A tariffs be vacated, that any duties paid be refunded with interest and that the government be “permanently enjoined” from imposing the tariffs again.

The Court of International Trade stayed the liquidation of steel and aluminum "derivative" imports potentially subject to the Section 232 national security tariffs, in an Aug. 2 decision. Due in part to a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Transpacific Steel LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT permitted the U.S.'s motion for a stay of liquidation for entries that would be assessed the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum derivatives.

Strait Shipbrokers and its managing director, Murtuza Mustafa Munir Basrai, filed a complaint July 19 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging its Specially Designated Nationals listing (see 2101050012). The Trump administration made the designation after concluding the company helped with the transport of petroleum from Iran. Straight Shipbroker countered, claiming it's not required to check the origin of its cargo in its role as a broker and that the designation was made in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and its Fifth Amendment rights to due process (Strait Shipbrokers Pte. Ltd. et al. v. Blinken et al., D.C. Cir. #21-01946).

The U.S. requested the chance to take another look at an Enforce and Protect Act investigation to consider documents that were not sent from one CBP office to another, in a July 30 motion for remand in the Court of International Trade. The agency also sought the remand in light of the court's decision in Royal Brush v. United States, in which CIT held that CBP failed to provide adequate public summaries of business confidential information (BCI) (see 2012020050). The plaintiff in the case, Leco Supply, opposed the remand request, arguing that it is "too broad to be justifiable" under the court's standards for allowing remands (Leco Supply, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00136).

Dali Bagrou and his company World Mining and Oil Supply pleaded guilty on Aug. 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to violating the Export Control Reform Act, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said in a press release. The scheme started when a Russian state-owned enterprise began working with Oleg Vladislavovich Nikitin, general director of Russia-based energy company KS Engineering, to buy a power turbine from a U.S.-based manufacturer for around $17.3 million, the release said.

An Enforce and Protect Act investigation into alleged antidumping or countervailing duty evasion by a cabinet importer didn't produce evidence that the evasion was happening, CBP said in a July 21 notice of determination. The investigation involved BGI Group, which does business as U.S. Cabinet Depot and was alleged to have shipped wooden cabinet and vanities (WCV) "subject to the AD/CVD Orders to Cambodian company Cambodia Golden Coast Wood Products Co., Ltd." for "repackaging and exporting the Chinese-origin merchandise to BGI." Based on the information on the record of the investigation, "including the absence of sufficient additional evidence of evasion obtained subsequent to the [notice of investigation], CBP finds that substantial evidence does not exist that BGI entered into the customs territory of the United States WCV manufactured in China that had been transshipped through Cambodia during the period of this EAPA investigation."