The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 9-15:

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

The Court of International Trade has jurisdiction to hear government lawsuits to recover unpaid excise taxes even when no penalty is sought, it said in a pair of decisions issued July 3. CIT has exclusive purview over cases dealing with violations of 19 USC 1592, and though laws on CIT jurisdiction over those cases refer only to penalty cases and recovery of customs duties, the underlying law specifically allows CBP to seek recovery of duties, taxes and fees without collecting a penalty, CIT said. Federal excise taxes, which are collected at the time of importation and are a condition of release, “are customs duties for the purposes of jurisdiction,” the trade court said.

The owner and manager of a New Orleans-based freight forwarder were recently arrested for their part in a conspiracy to fix prices for international freight forwarding services, the Justice Department said in a July 3 press release. A complaint unsealed June 29 in Eastern Louisiana U.S. District Court alleges Roberto Dip, owner and CEO of the unnamed forwarder, and Jason Handal, its manager, schemed with other forwarders to raise prices on their U.S. customers for shipments to Honduras and elsewhere, beginning with a meeting held in Honduras in 2014.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 25 - July 1:

A CBP agricultural specialist is facing federal charges of falsifying ship inspection documents, according to an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on June 21. Carl James is said to have "falsified" a PPQ Form 228 in 2015 and two AI-288s in 2017, indicating that he inspected the ships even though he had not, the indictment said. A CBP spokesman said James is no longer employed by the agency.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 18-24:

The American Institute for International Steel will announce on June 27 "the launch of a legal challenge that seeks to remedy a situation that is bad for the American economy and American workers alike," the group said in a June 26 news release. AIIS said "President Trump’s Section 232 tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have already created significant collateral damage for U.S. industries." The group called the coming legal action a "critically important, first-of-its-kind initiative."

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 11-17:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 15 ruled against a challenge to Section 201 safeguard duties on solar cells, affirming a recent Court of International Trade decision not to put the duties on hold by way of an injunction. Like CIT did in a “careful and thorough opinion” issued in March (see 1803060027), the Federal Circuit found Silfab, a U.S. importer, and two Canadian exporters, Heliene and Canadian Solar, are not likely to succeed in their challenge because President Donald Trump acted within his authority when he issued the Section 201 safeguards. Among other things, the appeals court found that disagreement at the International Trade Commission and the lack of a unified recommendation on remedy doesn’t mean Trump couldn’t set the tariffs anyway, because the ITC had already found injury, CAFC said. The president also had the authority to set duties on Canada despite the lack of an ITC recommendation to do so, CAFC said.