A former jewelry importer will pay more than $400,000 to settle a False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit that alleges it intentionally misclassified imported earrings to avoid paying higher customs duties, the Justice Department said in a Dec. 8 news release. A TSI Accessories Group subsidiary allegedly classified the earrings based on the value of pairs or larger groups, when they should have been classified based on the value of each single earring, said the whistleblower complaint, subsequently joined by the Justice Department.
Importers must file protests to preserve their rights to Section 301 tariff exclusions issued after an entry has already liquidated, the Department of Justice said in a motion to dismiss a pair of lawsuits that seek to have the exclusions applied past the protest deadline. CBP’s failure to apply the exclusions was a protestable event, even if the exclusions did not exist at the time, and the Court of International Trade’s jurisdictional scheme means CIT can’t hear cases wherein the importer skipped the protest scheme, DOJ said.
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 1 sent an Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) evasion determination back down to CBP for reconsideration, finding the agency failed to properly disclose information to the accused that it relied on to find the importer guilty of evasion. CBP’s regulations require the agency to make available public summaries of any redacted or business confidential information on the record of an EAPA investigation, but CBP did not do so during a proceeding involving Royal Brush Manufacturing, a pencil importer alleged to have transshipped Chinese pencils through the Philippines to avoid antidumping duties, CIT said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted the Commerce Department a wide berth to apply antidumping and countervailing duties to goods packaged alongside nonsubject merchandise, in a Nov. 30 decision that provoked a dissent from the appeals court’s only judge with a background in trade.
The International Trade Commission will recommend leaving in place current safeguard tariffs on large residential washers, it said in a Nov. 25 news release. The tariff rate quota, in place since 2018, “continues to be necessary to prevent or remedy serious injury to the U.S. industry,” and “the domestic industry is making a positive adjustment to import competition,” the ITC said.
Just as the recent flood of Section 301 litigation had appeared to slow to a trickle, importers added more than two dozen more lawsuits last week to the multitude of cases currently before the Court of International Trade. But while the new complaints restate the same arguments made by thousands of other plaintiffs in the sprawling litigation, many of the new cases differ in that they seek to invalidate only List 4 tariffs, excluding List 3 from the requests.
A hotly contested exemption from safeguard duties on solar cells has now been terminated -- at least for the time being -- after the Court of International Trade on Nov. 19 declined to expand an injunction to include the administration’s latest bid to withdraw the exclusion, and lifted a temporary restraining order against the withdrawal (see 2010260025 and 2011090033). The elimination of the exemption takes immediate effect, according to a CBP spokesperson.
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 18 weighed in on the meaning of “not minced” and “packed in oil” for seafood preparations in the tariff schedule, finding tuna salad pouches imported by StarKist are both, and must be entered under a high 35% duty rate.
FDA has created a new import alert for ready-to-eat human foods that don’t meet the agency’s preventive controls regulation requirements. New Import Alert 99-43 published Nov. 13 provides for detention without physical examination of “Ready-To-Eat Human Food Products That Appear To Have Been Prepared, Packed, Or Held Under Insanitary Conditions,” its title says.
A furniture importer filed a wide-ranging legal challenge on Nov. 4 of CBP’s regulations and procedures for Enforce and Protect Act investigations. Aspects Furniture says the 2016 law, as well as CBP’s regulations and policies implementing it, deprived it of its constitutional due process rights. The importer also says CBP misapplied deadlines and relied on hearsay and unsupported claims to find it evaded AD duties. CBP found Aspects evaded antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China in an EAPA determination finalized in May (see 2005220029).