The Court of International Trade on Dec. 18 denied an application for a temporary restraining order against the liquidation of entries made by various companies represented by Grunfeld Desiderio seeking refunds of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (Strato Technology Solutions v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00322).
As importers everywhere await the Supreme Court's final decision on the fate of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, more and more attorneys are counseling their clients to file preemptive lawsuits at the Court of International Trade to guarantee their right to a refund of the IEEPA tariffs.
The Commerce Department reasonably found that wheels made in a third country with a mix of Chinese and third-country parts are covered by the scope of the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on steel trailer wheels from China, the U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 15 (Asia Wheel Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #s 25-1689, 25-1694).
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 19 denied exporter Fuzhou Hengli Paper's motion to supplement the record to add an Excel data file in a case on the antidumping duty investigation on paper plates from China. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that the exporter didn't properly file its exhibit in line with Commerce's procedures for filing documents on the agency's ACCESS system, since Fuzhou Hengli only filed its submission "on the one-day lag system on a temporary basis in connection with the barcode of the non-final rebuttal brief." The exporter never re-filed the submission "after one business day with the final rebuttal brief," the judge noted. By failing to re-file the next day, the respondent filed its final rebuttal brief without an attached exhibit, meaning the file at issue was never "formally placed on the administrative record," the court said.
The following lawsuits were filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
Attorneys at Grunfeld Desiderio filed an application for a temporary restraining order last week against the liquidation of entries in various cases that were assessed tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In its response filed on Dec. 16, the U.S. repeatedly cited the Court of International Trade's recent decision to deny an injunction against liquidation in other cases seeking IEEPA tariff refunds on the grounds that the trade court has the power to order reliquidation of finally liquidated entries in Section 1581(i) cases (see 2512150029) (Strato Technology Solutions v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00322).
In oral argument before Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett, parties grappled with how much the Commerce Department was required to consider the original record of its review of the countervailing duty order on Canadian softwood lumber -- which has been subject to litigation since its results were published in 2019 (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 19-00122).
The United States-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement established a "double substantial transformation" test to qualify for preferential tr eatment under the FTA, the U.S. argued in a cross-motion for partial summary judgment at the Court of International Trade. The controlling authority regarding the test is General Note 30 to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule and not, as importer JBF Bahrain has argued, the executive agreement between the two countries or a side letter on tariff classification, the U.S. said (JBF Bahrain v. United States, CIT # 23-00067).
In remand results published Dec. 15, the Commerce Department maintained its refusal to grant exporter Dingsheng Aluminum Industries Group a double remedies adjustment in its countervailing duty administrative review on aluminum foil from China (Jiangsu Dingsheng New Materials Joint-Stock Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00264).
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 18 again remanded the Commerce Department's countervailing duty expedited review of softwood lumber products from Canada. After multiple remands, the sole remaining issue concerns the calculation of the CVD rate for respondent Les Produits Forestiers D&G and its cross-owned affiliates, including Les Produits Forestiers Portbec. Specifically, the issue is the method of calculation used to adjust for the amount of lumber D&G and Portbec bought from unaffiliated suppliers when determining how much of the suppliers' subsidies were attributable to D&G. Barnett held that Commerce abused its discretion in the most recent remand by declining D&G's request to reopen the record to provide additional information to help distinguish sales affected by the subsidies. The judge said finality concerns don't overcome this failure.