The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 8 affirmed the Court of International Trade's ruling that sales from importer Midwest-CBK's Canadian warehouse to U.S. customers are "sales for export to the U.S." rather than "domestic sales" and thus were properly appraised using transaction value rather than deductive value. CAFC Judges Sharon Prost and Tiffany Cunningham, along with District Court for the District of Delaware Judge Richard Andrews, sitting by designation, held that the transaction value statute doesn't "expressly require that a sale be international or occur abroad." The court added that the case law and the statutory scheme don't support Midwest's claim, since they establish that "domestic sales may in fact serve as the basis of a transaction value appraisement."
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's final determination in the countervailing duty investigation of frozen warmwater shrimp from Vietnam. Judge Leo Gordon held that the court "cannot agree" with plaintiff Soc Trang Seafood that Commerce acted unreasonably when it found that the Thailand Board of Investment's "Cost of doing Business in Thailand 2023" report constituted the "best available information on the record for establishing a benchmark to value land rented from government authorities."
The Commerce Department erred in determining that U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood didn't make a "bona fide" sale of the domestic like product as part of an antidumping duty review on Vietnamese frozen fish fillets, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public Jan. 6.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 8 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on solar cells from China following a remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Commerce's overhead ratio calculations due to issues with the agency's energy and manufacturing overhead determinations. For energy costs, the judge said Commerce adequately supported its decision to use inventories costs in the denominator of the overhead ratio, since "some amount of energy costs is contained in inventories costs" and the agency can't strip out the non-energy costs. Regarding the manufacturing overhead costs, Kelly said the evidence supports Commerce's inferences that "inventories costs include some energy costs" and "the difference between cost of sales and inventories costs reflects manufacturing overhead."
The Court of International Trade announced that Pacer.gov will undergo maintenance Jan. 11, 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. During this time, users may experience intermittent difficulties when "logging onto CM/ECF and when making payments through Pay.gov."
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 6 granted importer Second Nature Designs' motion for a four-month extension to complete discovery in a customs case involving various different categories of decorative plant parts. Judge Lisa Wang ordered that fact discovery shall be completed by May 8 and that any motions regarding the "sufficiency of discovery" shall be filed by June 8 (Second Nature Designs v. United States, CIT # 17-00271).
Customs law firm Stein Shostak withdrew from its representation of importer Cozy Comfort Company in the company's lawsuit regarding the classification of its product, The Comfy, an oversized pullover. The case will continue to be litigated by Chris Duncan, a former Stein Shostak partner, who has moved to Squire Patton.
In a Jan. 5 reply, importer Scottsdale Tobacco disagreed that it hadn’t offered the necessary documentation to support a substitution of unused merchandise drawback for certain 2018 and 2019 entries -- it had done so in its motion for judgment, which was all it needed to do for an issue the Court of International Trade hears de novo, it said (Scottsdale Tobacco v. United States, CIT # 24-00022).
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade: