The Court of International Trade remains open during the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic, but some that have been potentially exposed to COVID-19 will be denied permission to enter the courthouse, CIT said in an update on its website. “[I]f you have traveled to China, Italy, Iran, or South Korea within the last 14 days; reside or have had close contact with someone who has traveled to one of the above areas within the last 14 days; have been asked to self-quarantine by any hospital or health agency; or have been diagnosed with, or have had contact with, anyone who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, you must inform the Court Security Officers upon entering the courthouse and will be denied permission to enter,” CIT said. “If you are so affected and are an attorney scheduled to appear before the Court in the near future, you must notify the court so that appropriate safeguard measures can be taken. You may appear via teleconference or video-conference with the approval of the presiding Judge,” the trade court said. “These restrictions will remain in place until further notice.”

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 2-8:

An importer may protest CBP’s exclusion of its redesigned product for patent infringement under a Section 337 exclusion order, the Court of International Trade said in a March 4 decision. The government argued that CBP’s exclusion of Wirtgen road milling machines was not protestable because CBP was simply enforcing the International Trade Commission’s exclusion order, and that the decision should have instead been raised with the ITC and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. But CIT, noting that the ITC in the underlying Section 337 investigation specifically declined to address the redesigned products, found that CBP acted on its own authority to exclude the road milling machines, and as a result its decision could be protested. The trade court denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case as outside its jurisdiction.

Clarification: Jeffrey Neely of Husch Blackwell is the lead attorney for J. Conrad and Metropolitan Staple in their respective lawsuits challenging Section 232 tariffs on “derivatives” (see 2003030048).

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 24 - March 1:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 17-23:

Two tire importers in Miami face years in prison for their alleged failure to pay excise taxes on their tire imports, the Justice Department said in a Feb. 21 press release. Marco Parra and Eira Luces-Parra, a married couple who owned Road Plus Tire, allegedly collected excise taxes from some tire retailers that bought their imported tires, but failed to file an excise tax return. In other instances, they allegedly did not collect the taxes at all, instead obtaining false bills of lading claiming that the tires were exported so they could claim an excise tax credit. The two were indicted by a federal grand jury Feb. 20 in the South Florida U.S. District Court. If convicted, they face a maximum of five years in prison for each count, DOJ said.

Correction: The Justice Department did not admit that PrimeSource is likely to succeed on the merits in its challenge to Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum “derivatives,” as part of its agreement on a preliminary injunction temporarily stopping collection of the duties on entries from PrimeSource (see 2002200025).

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 10-16:

Ford Motor Company recently filed a Supreme Court appeal of a case involving tariff engineering of Ford transit vans to obtain a lower rate for passenger vehicles. The automaker’s Feb. 13 petition for certiorari says the Supreme Court’s intervention is necessary to end uncertainty for U.S. importers caused by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s “doctrinally incoherent and erroneous precedent,” and to rectify the CAFC’s errant decision not to address certain arguments made by Ford at a lower court.