The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 8 upheld the Commerce Department's decision to use adverse facts available against respondent Corinth Pipeworks Pipe Industry in the 2019-20 review of the antidumping duty order on large diameter welded pipe from Greece. Judges Jimmie Reyna, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark held that Commerce reasonably found that Corinth failed to cooperate to the best of its ability in the review by not remedying deficiencies in its submitted cost reconciliation. The court added that the agency wasn't required to provide the respondent with an opportunity to comment on Commerce's analysis that led to the conclusion that Corinth's reported costs didn't reconcile with its financial accounting system. The opportunity to comment only applies to information submitted by interested parties, not Commerce's internal findings.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on Sept. 2 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):
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 2 heard oral argument in a case from importers, led by Sweet Harvest Foods, against the International Trade Commission's finding of critical circumstances for the importers' Vietnamese honey imports, which led to the retroactive imposition of antidumping duties on entries made in the 90-day window prior to the suspension of liquidation. Ron Kendler, counsel for the importers, argued that the ITC violated the logic of the critical circumstances statute, while ITC attorney Michael Haldenstein and Melissa Brower, counsel for petitioner American Honey Producers Association, said the commission's decision was entirely in bounds of the law (Sweet Harvest Foods v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1370).
The Court of International Trade held that Section 1318(a) of the Trade Act of 1930, which lets the president grant duty-free treatment to certain goods "for use in emergency relief work," doesn't cover solar cells and modules. As a result, Judge Timothy Reif vacated the Commerce Department's duty "pause" on collection of antidumping duties and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam that were set to be collected from the four countries due to an anti-circumvention proceeding.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Commerce Department failed to select more than one respondent in both the antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations on solar cells from Thailand, the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee argued last week in a pair of complaints. The alliance, which served as the petitioner for both investigations, said that Commerce failed to abide by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit precedent by not selecting more than one respondent where multiple companies are subject to the investigations (American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee v. United States, CIT #s 25-00165, -00167).
The petitioner and a pair of respondents traded briefs at the Court of International Trade regarding various elements of the Commerce Department's countervailing duty investigation on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador (Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00025).
Importer HyAxiom prevailed in the Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 in its case regarding the classification of its PC50 supermodules. CIT Judge Timothy Stanceu held that the products are water gas generators, not electric generators or multifunctional machines.
Importer Cozy Comfort filed its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Aug. 25, arguing that the Court of International Trade was wrong to find that the company's product, The Comfy, is a pullover and not a blanket (Cozy Comfort v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1889).