The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department legally excluded importer Siffron's plastic shelf dividers from the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on raw flexible magnets from China, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Sept. 26 opinion. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves said that Commerce reasonably determined that the scope language and the (k)(1) sources, including prior scope rulings and a report from the International Trade Commission, established that the dividers didn't belong in the scope of the orders.
The Commerce Department properly hit exporter SeAH Steel Corp. with adverse facts available due to its failure to submit information on its use of the Korean Export-Import Bank Performance Guarantee program prior to the countervailing duty investigation period, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Sept. 26 opinion.
The U.S. urged the Supreme Court of the United States to reject importer PrimeSource Building Products' petition for a writ of certiorari in a case on the expansion of Section 232 duties onto "derivative" products, telling the high court that PrimeSource's separation of powers claims fall flat. While the importer said the case can give the court a chance to reconsider its approach to nondelegation, the government argued that, under the principle of stare decisis, the petitioner must identify a "special justification" for revisiting established law, which it has failed to do here (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Sup. Ct. # 23-69).
The draft text for curbing subsidies leading to overcapacity and overfishing released earlier in September received "broad support" from World Trade Organization members as the starting point for text-based negotiations, Iceland's Einar Gunnarsson, chair of the fisheries subsidies talks, reported, the WTO said. Noting the text's warm reception at the fifth "Fish Week" talks, held on Sept. 18-22, Gunnarsson said the next Fish Week will be dedicated to a "collective reading of the text" so line-by-line modifications can be proposed. The next Fish Week is set for Oct. 9-13.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 25 issued its mandate in a case concerning a $5.7 million customs penalty suit against importer Katana Racing. In the opinion, the appellate court said the Court of International Trade improperly dismissed the suit for lack of jurisdiction (see 2308030034). The trade court said Katana properly revoked a statute of limitations waiver, making the U.S. government's suit untimely, but the appellate court said the statute of limitations is "not a jurisdictional time limit" and instead provides an "affirmative defense" that can be waived (U.S. v. Katana Racing, Fed. Cir. # 22-1832).
The Supreme Court of the U.S. on Sept. 13 extended the deadline for exporter Oman Fasteners to file a petition for a writ of certiorari in its case on then-President Donald Trump's expansion of the Section 232 duties to include steel and aluminum "derivative" products. The company now has until Oct. 20 to file the brief. Oman Fasteners said it was in the process of filing its own petition to the high court following importer PrimeSource Building Products' petition in its suit on the tariff expansion.
The Commerce Department improperly included sales made by exporter Megaa Moda in the calculation of normal value as part of the 2021-2022 review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India, petitioner Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee said in a Sept. 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee v. United States, CIT # 23-00202).
A protest approval relied on in a customs complaint from importer Under the Weather wasn't a "prior interpretive ruling" that CBP had to publish and revoke under 19 U.S.C. § 1625(c)'s notice-and-comment procedures before issuing a headquarters ruling on pop-up tents, the U.S. argued. Filing a partial motion to dismiss, the government claimed that only "interpretive determinations with prospective effect" qualify for the statute's "procedural safegurads" (Under the Weather v. United States, CIT # 21-00211).
US Rails Against Importer's 'Myriad of Unsupported' Claims on Classification of Steel Conduit Tubing
Importer Shamrock Building Materials laid out a "myriad of unsupported and unpersuasive arguments" against the Court of International Trade's finding that electrical conduit is properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 7306, the U.S. argued in a Sept. 22 reply brief. The government said the heading, which provides for "other tubes, pipes and hollow profiles" of iron or steel, exactly describes the electrical conduit, and that heading 8547, which covers "electric conduit tubing lined with insulating material," does not fit the bill (Shamrock Building Materials v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1648).