After the U.S. requested sanctions against a steel wire hanger importer for failing to respond to its complaint (see 2510300049), the importer -- being sued for allegedly dodging duties -- finally filed its amended answer Nov. 14 (United States v. Zhe “John” Liu, CIT # 22-00215, 23-00116, 24-00132).
In a Nov. 14 complaint, a cased pencils importer said CBP wrongly determined its novelty pencils were of Chinese origin and liquidated them at a 114.9% antidumping duty rate, having based its finding on an unrelated company-specific scope ruling (Raymond Geddes & Company v. United States, CIT # 25-00265).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 17 sustained the Commerce Department's decision not to attribute subsidies received by Nur, an affiliated input supplier of countervailing duty respondent Kaptan Demir, to Kaptan in the 2018 CVD review of Turkish rebar. Juges Raymond Chen, Richard Linn and Todd Hughes held that the Court of International Trade didn't abuse its discretion in initially remanding the review. They said that Commerce properly found that the "unprocessed steel scrap" provided by Nur "was a common input used in a variety of products and industries" and that "Nur’s business activities were not dedicated almost exclusively to the production of a higher value-added product."
President Donald Trump may look to ramp up his use of sections 232 and 301 should the Supreme Court rule that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act can't be used for levying tariffs, various lawyers told us. However, the expanded use of these statutes, both as they are being used now and how they may be used to supplant the existing reciprocal and fentanyl trafficking tariffs, may encounter legal difficulties.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 17 held that five types of medical foods imported by Nutricia North America are properly classified as "medicaments" under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 3004 and not as "food preparations" under heading 2106. Reversing the Court of International Trade's decision, Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark found that Nutricia's goods plainly fall within heading 3004, particularly due to the fact that they qualify as "medical foods" as defined by Congress and the FDA in implementing the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. Taranto, writing for the court, added that the entries aren't excluded from heading 3004 due to Chapter 30's note 1(a), which says Chapter 30 doesn't include foods or beverages "(such as dietetic, diabetic or fortified foods, food supplements, tonic beverages and mineral waters), other than nutritional preparations for intravenous administration."
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 12 granted default judgment against importer Rago Tires for negligence in importing tires by not declaring the goods as subject to antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese truck and bus tires. Judge Joseph Laroski ordered Rago to pay a $14,108.87 penalty.
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 12 held that the deadline for filing a complaint isn't a jurisdictional issue. As a result, Judge Richard Eaton said he had the power to vacate the dismissal of a case from various exporters in an antidumping duty case, which was issued due to the exporters' failure to timely file a complaint.
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Petitioner Magnesia Carbon Bricks Fair Trade Committee will appeal a recent Court of International Trade decision upholding the Commerce Department's exclusion of seven types of bricks imported by Fedmet Resources from the scope of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on magnesia carbon bricks from China (see 2510090016). The trade court said the exclusion of the bricks comports with a 2014 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, which led to the standard that the addition of any amount of alumina to a magnesia carbon brick excludes it from the orders. The case was filed by Fedmet to contest the scope ruling, which came after a referral in an AD/CVD evasion case, on 11 of Fedmet's brick types. After CIT initially remanded the case to address the CAFC ruling, Commerce said seven of Fedmet's brick types are excluded from the order, since they have a non-zero alumina content (Fedmet Resources v. United States, CIT # 23-00117).