New USDA Agricultural Marketing Service National Organic Program requirements are mandatory starting on March 19, CBP said in a CSMS message on March 19. The message reminded the trade public of the USDA Strengthening Organic Enforcement final rule on January 2023 that required electronic National Organic Program import certificates for organic agricultural products (see 2301180051).
CBP created Harmonized System Update (HSU) 2404 on March 15, containing 2,083 ABI records and 338 Harmonized Tariff Schedule records. The update includes several partner government agency Harmonized Tariff Schedule flag updates, as well as adjustments required by the verification of the 2024 HTS.
Retroactive suspension of liquidation and antidumping and countervailing duty cash deposit requirements take effect for unthreaded pins of alloy steel rod from China entered on or after July 12, 2023, the Commerce Department said in the preliminary determination of an anti-circumvention inquiry.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 4-10:
Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.
The Commerce Department issued notices in the Federal Register on its recently initiated antidumping duty investigations on melamine from Germany, India, Japan, Qatar, the Netherlands and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as its countervailing duty investigation on melamine from Germany, India, Qatar, and Trinidad and Tobago (C-428-853, C-533-925, C-518-002, C-274-811). The investigations cover entries for the calendar year 2023.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 26 - March 3:
Whole garlic cloves in brine imported from China by Roland Goods aren't subject to an antidumping duty order on fresh garlic from China, the Commerce Department said in a March 1 scope ruling.
Three domestic manufacturers filed a petition Feb. 28 asking the International Trade Commission to conduct a Section 201 safeguard investigation on imports of polyester staple fiber.