Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden is among 13 federal judges who signed a May 6 letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik saying they won't hire any Columbia University law students as clerks, starting with the entering 2024 class, as a result of the university's response to the student protests regarding the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Vaden is the only CIT judge to sign the letter.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. swapped out its lead attorney in a case challenging CBP's denial of a Section 301 exclusion for its entries of "steel side protective attachments for motor vehicles, specifically side bars, fern bars, and bars." The government said Brandon Kennedy, a DOJ trade trial attorney, took the place of Edward Kenny, senior trial counsel at DOJ. The case was brought by importer MKI Enterprise Group, doing business as Winbo USA, to challenge CBP's denial of its protest seeking Section 301 exclusions the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative granted for "side protective attachments" (see 2404220057) (MKI Enterprise Group v. United States, CIT # 22-00131).
The Court of International Trade in a text-only order instructed importer Acquisition 362, doing business as Strategic Supply, to address "whether the court has jurisdiction to review the denial of a protest if the basis for the denial" is that CBP was "simply following" the Commerce Department's instructions (Acquisition 362 v. United States, CIT # 24-00011).
The Commerce Department was wrong to deduct Section 301 duties from an exporter’s U.S. price as part of its antidumping duty calculation, that exporter said May 3 in defense of an earlier motion for judgment. It said Section 301 duties aren’t “normal import duties,” but rather remedial “special” duties that statute requires be included in export price calculations (Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00068).
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Antidumping duty petitioner American HFC Coalition took to the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's decision not to use Mexico as the primary surrogate nation in the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on hydrofluorocarbon blends from China (The American HFC Coalition v. United States, CIT # 24-00071).
The Court of International Trade on May 8 remanded the Commerce Department's treatment of antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum's raw material costs and its hedging practices due to the agency's failure to address the issues during the AD investigation on aluminum foil from Turkey. Judge Stephen Vaden said Commerce failed to address one of Assan's arguments regarding its raw material costs administratively. He also said the agency's post hoc rationalizations regarding the company's hedging revenues don't square with its treatment of the revenues during the investigation. The judge sustained Commerce's treatment of both Assan's late fees as part of a duty drawback adjustment and of management fees paid by Assan's affiliated U.S. reseller. The court also granted Commerce's voluntary remand request regarding the denominator of the duty drawback adjustment.
The Court of International Trade May 3 dismissed the final charge remaining in a 2002 fraud case brought by the U.S. against an importer, Lee Hunt International, and a few of its sureties, including Frontier Insurance Co. (U.S. v. Lee-Hunt International, Inc., CIT # 02-00816).
The Court of International Trade on May 3 entered judgment for importer Fraserview Remanufacturing after CBP corrected the liquidation status of the company's entries. In January, the trade court said Fraserview didn't need a protest to file suit at the court for entries that were erroneously deemed liquidated while liquidation was suspended (see 2401250039) (Fraserview Remanufacturing v. U.S., CIT # 22-00244).