OtterBox's victory in a Court of International Trade case setting a lower duty rate in a customs challenge on smartphone covers cannot be extended to a prior disclosure made by OtterBox, CIT said in an Aug. 18 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly ruled that the court did not have the jurisdiction to make the determination that entries not part of the Summons of the case should be reliquidated.
Court of International Trade activity
The Court of International Trade consolidated six challenges to the Commerce Department's denials of Section 232 steel and aluminum exclusion requests in an Aug. 17 order. Judge M. Miller Baker said the cases brought by North American Interpipe, Evraz Inc., Allegheny Technologies Incorporated, AM/NS Calvert, California Steel Industries and Valbruna Slater Stainless will be jointly considered for the "limited purpose of resolving the motions to remand."
The Court of International Trade stayed proceedings in Stanley Black & Decker's case challenging the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff expansion to include steel "derivative" products pending the PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S. case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In back-to-back orders on Aug. 18, the court also issued a preliminary injunction against Stanley's entries subject to the steel derivatives tariffs (Stanley Black & Decker v. U.S., CIT #21-00262). Seeing as the PrimeSource case is the case on the forefront of the Section 232 steel derivatives tariff question, resolution of Stanley's case will wait until its appeal is settled. "The ultimate resolution of the PrimeSource case will likely resolve this matter without the necessity of going to trial, or, alternatively, it may narrow the issues in dispute," Stanley's motion for the stay said (see 2108030067).
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Aug. 19 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
The U.S. Court of International Trade, per an order Aug. 18, scheduled a status conference in the Section 301 litigation for 10 a.m. on Sept. 1, two days before CBP is required to create a repository for importers to request liquidation suspensions of customs entries from China with lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure. The court has extended the deadline three times since ordering CBP to establish the repository in its July 6 preliminary injunction order (see 2108170049). The plaintiffs’ steering committee and the Department of Justice negotiated agreements on some previously contested terms for setting up the repository but are still far apart on others.
The Commerce Department will reconsider its application of the major input rule, treatment of certain general and administrative expenses and its use of adverse facts available in an antidumping duty case, according to two Aug. 18 Court of International Trade opinions. After remanding the case once before, Judge Leo Gordon remanded certain elements of the results yet again, but did sustain certain parts of Commerce's reconsideration, including its differential pricing analysis and adjustment of interest expenses to include a portion of the respondent's parent holding company's interest expense.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department reasonably rejected United Nations Comtrade and Eurostat data on natural gas imports from Russia when spurning the use of a tier-two benchmark for its less than adequate remuneration of a countervailing duty respondent's natural gas purchase prices, the Court of International Trade said. Further, Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that the agency properly denied the use of Eurostat natural gas import data from Norway, Algeria, Libya and Ukraine in a tier-three benchmark calculation, while reasonably selecting International Energy Agency (IEA) data for the benchmark.
The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).
A motion for judgment submitted by plaintiff Fujian Yinfeng Imp & Exp Trading Co. was rejected by the Court of International Trade's Judge M. Miller Baker on Aug. 17 due to a failure to comply with formatting requirements. In a notice from the court, Baker said that the motion was rejected since it failed to include a glossary of case-specific acronyms and abbreviations. The corrected document was instructed to be refiled by Aug. 25 (Fujian Yinfeng Imp & Exp Trading Co., Ltd. v. U.S., CIT #21-00088).