The Court of International Trade upheld the finding of CBP's Office of Regulations and Rulings (ORR) that MSeafood Corp. did not evade antidumping duties on frozen warmwater shrimp from India by transshipping the products through Vietnam, in a decision released to the public May 4. Judge Claire Kelly said that CBP in its affirmative evasion finding failed to consider evidence showing exporter Minh Phu Group's tracing system is reliable and arbitrarily transformed a single instance of evasion into an evasion finding for a whole year.
The Commerce Department dropped its presumption that exporter Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. was controlled by the Chinese government after the Court of International Trade questioned whether the agency could disregard an individually selected respondent's data in favor of the country-wide non-market economy rate. In its remand results to the trade court, Commerce assigned Jilin a zero percent dumping rate using the company's actual submissions during an antidumping duty administrative review on multilayered wood flooring from China (Jilin Forest Industry Jinqiao Flooring Group Co. v. United States, CIT # 18-00191).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed a suit from fireworks importer Jake's Fireworks concerning the Consumer Product Safety Commission's determination that the company's "Excalibur" line of fireworks constitutes a banned hazardous substance under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act. Judge Theodore Chuang said the CPSC's notices of noncompliance do not amount to final agency action, depriving Jake's Fireworks of the right to challenge the notices as having violated the Administrative Procedure Act (Jake's Fireworks v. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, D. Md. 2023)
The Commerce Department erred by calculating a single weighted-averge steel plate cost for all home and U.S. market sales in the 2020-21 antidumping duty administrative review on utility scale wind towers from South Korea, respondent Dongkuk S&C Co. argued in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. In the review, Commerce disregarded the actual steel plate costs linked with each individual project, via cost "smoothing" (Dongkuk S&C Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00075).
The Commerce Department can't use total adverse facts available for countervailing duty respondent The Ancientree Cabinet Co.'s alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, the Court of International Trade ruled in a decision released to the public May 3. While Ancientree only submitted loan information for most but not all of its customers, the trade court found perfection is not required to verify non-use of the program.
Judge Timothy Dyk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sharply questioned CBP at oral argument on whether the agency violated importer Royal Brush Manufacturing's due process rights in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation that found that the importer evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on pencils from China (Royal Brush Manufacturing v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-1226).
The Commerce Department's denial of LE Commodities' 14 requests for exclusions from paying Section 232 duties on speciality steel products constitutes a "blatant disregard of its obligation to engage in fair, reasoned decision-making," LE Commodities said in a motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade. The agency failed to consider evidence establishing that the steel products were not reasonably available in the U.S. in a "sufficient quantity," the importer said, and didn't provide a sufficiently reasoned basis for each of its decisions rejecting the exclusion requests (LE Commodities v. United States, CIT # 22-00245).
CBP illegally denied importer Atlas Power's protest claiming its NVIDIA CMP 170HX printed circuit assemblies were exempt from Section 301 duties, Atlas said in a complaint at the Court of International Trade. The importer said its assemblies, classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8473.30.1180, qualify for a Section 301 exclusion for unfinished logic boards (Atlas Power v. U.S., CIT # 23-00084).
Heat-treated forged steel rods imported by ME Global are properly classified in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule as "other bars" not further worked than forged, rather than in the importer's preferred classification as "grinding balls and similar articles for mills," the Court of International Trade ruled in a May 2 decision.