Congress could improve the Court of International Trade (CIT) through statutory updates to help improve it's efficiency, said CIT Chief Judge Donald Pogue, while speaking Feb. 27 on a panel at the Georgetown University Law Center International Trade Update conference. "There are too many areas in which the statute doesn't make sense," he said. "Our injunction practice is a good example." Problematic statutes are "wasting resources" and "we need a process that will identify those problems, find the solutions where, in fact, the administration of justice works better," he said. The panel included three CIT judges and a judge from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The event was sponsored by the Customs and International Trade Bar Association and the Federal Circuit Bar Association.
Protests must be filed at the port where the contested CBP decision was made in order to be eligible for a subsequent court challenge, ruled the Court of International Trade on Feb. 14 as it dismissed an importer’s tariff classification suit. The regulatory requirement that “protests shall be filed with the port director whose decision is protested” is a requirement for CIT jurisdiction, it said. Just as with the requirements that protests be filed on time and duties be paid before the trade court can take up a challenge, so must the importer meet the requirements of CBP’s “place-of-filing” regulation, it said.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit indicated during oral argument they could take a narrow approach to deciding the outcome of a controversial case on the scope of CBP notices of action. A Justice Department lawyer voiced concern that a Court of International Trade (CIT) decision finding a CBP notice of action improperly revoked an earlier ruling letter could force CBP to follow formal notice and comment procedure for every notice of action issued by the agency. But Federal Circuit Judges Kathleen O’Malley, Jimmie Reyna, and Eli Wallach questioned whether the particular notice of action issued to International Custom Products operated as a typical notice of action at all. The oral argument was held on Feb. 6 in Washington.
Beef jerky is correctly classified as a cured meat in the tariff schedule, said the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 3 as it denied an appeal by importer Link Snacks. Although the production of beef jerky involves an additional drying process, the product is also cured beforehand, which puts it squarely within the parameters of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for meat “of bovine animals: cured or pickled,” said CAFC.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 24 gave a green light to refunds of antidumping and countervailing duty cash deposits collected during the investigations on utility scale wind towers from China. The domestic Wind Tower Trade Coalition had appealed from the Court of International Trade, after the lower court denied an injunction preventing liquidation of wind towers from China entered between June 6, 2012, and Feb. 12, 2013. CAFC agreed with the lower court’s decision, finding the lawsuit unlikely to succeed, and refused to grant a preliminary injunction putting liquidation on hold.
Deckers Outdoor Corp. on Jan. 7 asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal on the tariff classification of its “Uggs” boots. According to Deckers, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision that the boots are “slip on” footwear improperly relied on an internal agency definition of slip-on footwear from CBP’s 1993 “Footwear Definitions” document. If allowed to stand, such reliance on unsupported administrative “fiat” statements would put importers in a difficult position by curtailing their ability to get courts to review tariff classification disputes, says Deckers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 27 affirmed the government’s right to collect over $6 million in surety bonds from Great American Insurance Co. to cover antidumping duties owed on entries of freshwater crawfish tail meat from China. The court said CBP’s failure to notify Great American of the suspension of liquidation of the entries did not invalidate the government lawsuit or the bonds, upholding an August 2011 decision from the Court of International Trade (see 11090903).
Rack Room Shoes on Dec. 4 petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case on gender discrimination by duty rates in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. The challenge to gender-specific duty rates on footwear and apparel was dismissed by the Court of International Trade and Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on its way to the Supreme Court, because they found Rack Room didn't prove the Congress intended to discriminate. Rack Room argues those courts set so high a bar in equal protection cases that discrimination challenges to laws would become nearly impossible.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 9-13 in case they were missed.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 13 found fault with a partial import ban on fingerprint scanners, ordering the International Trade Commission to reconsider its limited exclusion orders against Suprema and Mentalix. Because of the ITC wrongly found some products infringed patents in violation of Section 337, the exclusion orders only appear to be valid for Suprema’s RealScan 10 and RealScan 10F scanners, CAFC said. The appeals court remanded for the International Trade Commission to revise the exclusion orders accordingly.