A New York man was sentenced Aug. 27 to six months in prison for "smuggling Egyptian antiquities" into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced. The defendant, Ashraf Omar Eldarir, pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of smuggling goods through John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Aug. 29 said President Donald Trump exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by imposing the reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico to combat the flow of fentanyl. Declining to address whether IEEPA categorically provides for tariffs, though spilling much ink on the topic, a majority of the court held that IEEPA doesn't confer unbounded tariff authority (V.O.S. Selections v. Donald J. Trump, Fed. Cir. #s 25-1812, -1813).
Fariha Kabir, a former international trade litigation attorney at CBP, has left the agency to join Faegre Drinker as an associate, she announced on LinkedIn. Kabir had worked at CBP since 2021, helping with the litigation of customs matters before the Court of International Trade and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, including cases on tariff classification and value, the exclusion or detention of import entries, and CBP regulations.
While many attorneys believe that one of the cases on the legality of President Donald Trump's tariffs is on a collision course with the Supreme Court, questions remain about exactly when the high court will review the case and in what form. One possibility would see the lead appeal, V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, which currently sits before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, head to the Supreme Court's emergency, or "shadow," docket.
Importer Cozy Comfort filed its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Aug. 25, arguing that the Court of International Trade was wrong to find that the company's product, The Comfy, is a pullover and not a blanket (Cozy Comfort v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1889).
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 vacated the National Marine Fisheries Service's comparability findings on New Zealand's West Coast North Island multispecies set-net and trawl fisheries, though the court declined to compel NMFS to issue an import ban on fish and fish products from these fisheries under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).
CBP improperly classified certain toy lips as candy under Harmonized Tariff Schedule Chapter 17 instead of "other toys" under Chapter 95, said importer Imaginings, doing business as Flix Candy, in a complaint last week at the Court of International Trade. Flix said that while the lips consist of two components, the plastic lips and a candy lollipop, the lips give the item its "essential character" and thus qualify the goods for Chapter 95 classification (Imaginings 3, d/b/a Flix Candy v. United States, CIT # 21-00403).
Importer Allied Stone agreed to pay $12.4 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by evading antidumping duties and countervailing duties on quartz surface products from China, DOJ announced. The FCA case was initially filed by Melinda Hemphill, a whistleblower in the case, who will receive a $2,170,875 cut of the settlement.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 4-10:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will likely rule against the Trump administration in the lead case on the legality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, though it's unclear under what exact rationale the court will do so, said Peter Harrell, a former National Security Council official during the Biden administration.