The Court of International Trade on July 31 sustained in part and remanded in part the Commerce Department's scope ruling on importer School Specialty's No. 2 pencils made in the Philippines with Chinese-origin raw material inputs. Judge M. Miller Baker held that Commerce failed to discuss how it balanced its various findings after conducting a "substantial transformation" analysis and looking at where the pencil's "essential component" was made. However, Baker individually sustained Commerce's conclusions regarding the different factors found in these analyses.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on July 28 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):
Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett pressed counsel for petitioner Edsal Manufacturing during oral argument on July 23 regarding the company's challenge to the Commerce Department's surrogate financial statement selection in the antidumping duty investigation on boltless steel shelving units from Thailand. Barnett also sharply questioned Edsal's counsel regarding their challenge to Commerce's use of the commercial invoice date as the date of sale for respondent Siam Metal Tech's U.S. sales and the agency's reliance on respondent Bangkok Sheet Metal's total cost of manufacture value (Edsal Manufacturing Co. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00108).
The Commerce Department cannot investigate "transnational" subsidies, countervailing duty respondent Kukdo Chemical argued in a July 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Challenging the countervailing duty investigation on epoxy resins from South Korea, Kukdo said it's challenging "any and all substantive aspects of Commerce's" finding that the company received a countervailable subsidy via the provision of Epichlorohydrin (ECH) for less than adequate remuneration from China (Kukdo Chemical v. United States, CIT # 25-00146).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 sustained the Commerce Department's non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings despite the fact that the agency hadn't codified the policy in its regulations at the time the underlying review was challenged. Judges Todd Hughes, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Federal Circuit has a long line of cases upholding the policy and that, even if those cases didn't exist, Commerce didn't need to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement the policy.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on July 22 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):
Aluminum printing plate exporter Fujifilm Corp. said July 22 that the International Trade Commission had found its products caused domestic injury only by “finding that Fujifilm harmed itself” (Fujifilm North America Corp. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00251).
The Commerce Department fully supported its finding that importer Deacero's pre-stressed concrete steel wire (PC) strand circumvented the antidumping duty order on PC strand from Mexico, the U.S. argued in a July 23 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. The government said Commerce fully supported its comparison of Deacero's U.S. and Mexican production facilities, finding that Deacero's PC strand production process is "minor or insignificant," and determination that Deacero's sourcing of inputs from its Mexican affiliates supported a circumvention finding (Deacero v. United States, CIT # 24-00212).
The U.S. government's "newfound" theory of jurisdiction in two importers' case against the legality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is "both convoluted and wrong," the importers, Learning Resources and Hand2Mind, argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Learning Resources v. Donald J. Trump, D.C. Cir. # 25-5202).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: