Hialeah Aluminum Supply supports a Dominican aluminum extrusion producer's bid to join its lawsuit challenging an Enforce and Protect Act investigation into antidumping duty evasion. In a brief filed July 16, the importer said it supports a request from Kingtom Alumino, at the center of the challenged EAPA investigation (see 2106280026), for reconsideration of Kingtom's motion to intervene in the case.
Customs Duty
A Customs Duty is a tariff or tax which a country imposes on goods when they are transported across international borders. Customs Duties are used to protect countries' economies, residents, jobs, and environments, by limiting the flow of imported merchandise, especially restricted and prohibited goods, into the country. The Customs Duty Rate is a percentage determined by the value of the article purchased in the foreign country and not based on quality, size, or weight.
CBP announced the launch of an Enforce and Protect Act investigation and the imposition of “interim measures” on BGI Group for alleged evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties on wooden cabinets and vanities by way of transshipment through Vietnam, the agency said in a recent notice. CBP will suspend liquidation and require cash deposits as of March 26, 2021, for entries from Vietnam from the BGI Group, which does business as U.S. Cabinet Depot.
The Commerce Department was justified in continuing to apply total adverse facts available in an antidumping case after a Court of International Trade remand since the respondent failed to accurately report control number-specific U.S. sales and factors of production data when it could have "easily" done so, case petitioner Catfish Farmers of America said in a July 9 reply brief. Doubling down on Commerce's arguments, the catfish farmers said the court should sustain the remand results in the case over the final results of the 14th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam (Hung Vuong Corporation, et al. v. United States, CIT #19-00055).
Opposing sides in the Section 301 litigation appeared from the July 15 status conference at the U.S. Court of International Trade to be inching toward a compromise that would spare CBP the administrative burden of complying with the court's July 6 preliminary injunction (PI) order freezing liquidation of many thousands of unliquidated customs entries with lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure. The court called the conference to gauge progress in creating the order's "repository" for importers to seek the suspension of entries due to be liquidated during a 28-day temporary restraining order period that expires Aug. 2.
The Commerce Department will only partially apply adverse facts available for sales a diamond sawblade exporter made to its U.S. affiliate, which used a first-in-first-out methodology to keep track of its country of origin data when calculating the exporter's antidumping rate, it said in remand results filed by the agency July 13. The filing comes to the Court of International Trade after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit left it up to the trade court to determine if a further remand was needed. The Federal Circuit held that a remand was appropriate for Commerce to determine if it could disregard the exporter's U.S. sales using the FIFO methodology (Diamond Sawblades Manufacturers' Coalition v. United States, CIT #17-00167).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a Court of International Trade ruling dismissing an importer's challenge of CBP's assessment of antidumping and countervailing duties, for improper jurisdiction, in a July 14 opinion. The Federal Circuit found that TR International Trading Company, which filed its case under the trade court's Section 1581(i) "residual" jurisdiction provision, could have instead challenged a denied protest under 1581(a) or a scope ruling under 1581(c), rendering Section 1581(i) unavailable.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated July 14 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):
A group of surety associations should not be able to argue against when the six-year limitations period begins for a customs bond due to their role in "abetting the new shipper bond disaster," a group of domestic agricultural goods producers said in a July 8 amicus brief in the Court of International Trade. The brief was filed to oppose the surety associations' motion to intervene in the lawsuit (United States v. American Home Assurance Company, CIT #20-00175).
A furniture importer's argument that the Enforce and Protect Act investigation finding it guilty of antidumping duty evasion was unconstitutional is not valid since the importer does not have a protectable interest, the Department of Justice said in a July 9 brief in the Court of International Trade. Since a protectable interest is necessary to claim a due process violation has been committed, Aspects Furniture International's constitutional arguments against the EAPA process fall flat, DOJ said (Aspects Furnitre International, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-03824).
Commercial airline operator NetJets Aviation's lawsuit in the Court of International Trade over CBP's assessment of customs user fees on certain of its flights should be partially dismissed since NJA, in part, is claiming the wrong jurisdiction, the Department of Justice said. NJA challenged CBP's denial of its customs protest, filing its case under Section 1581(a) and 1581(i) in CIT, the latter being a challenge to agency action. Submitting a partial motion to dismiss on July 7, DOJ said that NJA's 1581(i) claim should be tossed since 1581(a) exists as the proper avenue of jurisdiction (NetJets Aviation, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00142).