The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 confidential order sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's findings in an antidumping duty proceeding on thermal paper from Germany. In a letter, Judge Gary Katzmann gave the litigants until Feb. 12 to review the confidential information in the opinion ahead of issuing the public version of the decision (Mantra Americas v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00632).
Calendars are visual objects, not notebooks or weekly planners, the government said Feb. 12 in a tariff classification case contesting CBP’s classification of an importer’s weekly planners as “stationary products” rather than duty-free “calendars” (Blue Sky The Color of Imagination v. U.S., CIT # 21-00624).
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The Commerce Department on Feb. 12 found on remand, and under protest, that a German subsidy was not de jure specific to an exporter of forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany (BGH Edelstahl Siegen v. U.S., CIT # 21-00080).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 12 sustained the Commerce Department's use of facts available for antidumping duty respondent Euro SME's inland freight costs for its U.S. sales. Judge Stephen Vaden said that contrary to the exporter's claim that Commerce "threw the book at it," the agency "acted with deliberation, patience, and arguably stayed its hand when it could have drawn adverse inferences more broadly against such a seasoned respondent."
The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 8 opinion made public Feb. 13 remanded some aspects of the Commerce Department's antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany. Judge Gary Katzmann sent back the coding of the static sensitivity product characteristic, classification of Koehler's accrued interest expenses as a cost of production and the use of the Cohen's d test to root out "masked" dumping, staying the case until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issues a decision in Stupp Corp. v. U.S. He sustained Commerce's inclusion of exporter Koehler Paper's "Blue4est" paper product within the scope of the investigation, the agency's coding of the dynamic sensitivity product characteristic and application of price adjustments for some home market rebates.
The statutory basis for the U.S. trade representative's lists 3 and 4A tariffs -- Section 307 of the Trade Act of 1930 -- only allows for a "modification" of existing duties and not a "radical and unprecedented seven-fold escalation launching an unbounded trade war with China," appellants in the massive lawsuit challenging the Section 301 tariffs on China told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 12 (HMTX Industries v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Feb. 12 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 following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
While the U.S. remained neutral, a steel nail exporter on Feb. 8 called “moot” a petitioner’s motion to stay one antidumping duty appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit until the petitioner’s other interlocutory appeal had been heard (Oman Fasteners v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 24-1350).