The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on April 4 after issuing a decision finding that the Commerce Department's third factor for assessing a foreign government's de facto control over an exporter, which addresses the selection of management, doesn't require a link to export activities. The appellate court also said Commerce properly requires separate rate respondents to "carry a burden of persuasion to justify a separate rate," rejecting exporter Pirelli Tyre Co.'s claim that the agency shouldn't have conflated a rebuttable presumption with a requirement to carry a burden of persuasion (see 2502110030). The court found that Pirelli didn't rebut the presumption of foreign state control in the 2017-18 review of the antidumping duty order on passenger vehicle and light truck tires from China (Pirelli Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2266).
Importer Amcor Flexibles Singen GmbH filed a stipulated judgment at the Court of International Trade in its customs suit on the classification of its aluminum foil entries. The judgment said the goods are to be classified under duty-free Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 7607.20.50, which covers other backed aluminum foil. CBP initially classified the goods under subheading 3921.90.40, which covers flexible products with textile components in which man-made fibers predominate by weight over any other single textile fiber. The product at issue is "20-micron aluminum foil, soft-temper, plain, bright side lacquer laminated to a 12-micron PET film" (Amcor Flexibles Singen GmbH v. United States, CIT # 16-00200).
The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a lawsuit on behalf of paper importer Emily Ley Paper, doing business as Simplified, on April 3 challenging President Donald Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose 20% tariffs on all goods from China. Filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Simplified laid out three constitutional and statutory claims against the use of IEEPA to impose tariffs and one claim that the tariffs violate the Administrative Procedure Act for unlawfully modifying the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (Emily Ley Paper, doing business as Simplified v. Donald J. Trump, N.D. Fla. # 3:25-00464).
Antigua and Barbuda formally accepted the World Trade Organization Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies on April 3, bringing the number of countries that have accepted the deal to 95. The WTO needs 16 more countries to accept to get to two-thirds of the membership, the threshold for the agreement to take effect.
Russian national Oleg Patsulya was sentenced April 2 to nearly six years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to ship controlled aviation technology to Russia in violation of U.S. export laws and to launder money in connection with the scheme, DOJ announced.
The Court of International Trade sent back the Commerce Department's use of UN Comtrade data in the benchmark price for plywood and the use of adverse facts available to find that certain input suppliers are government "authorities" in both the 2019 and 2020 reviews of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China. Issuing a pair of decisions on the reviews on April 3, Judge Timothy Reif said that while Commerce permissibly found that the Chinese government failed to submit adequate information regarding the input suppliers, the agency ultimately didn't give the foreign government proper notice or opportunity to remedy its deficiencies.
President Donald Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to enact his sweeping "retaliatory" tariffs (see 2504020086) has drawn serious speculation about whether the statute can serve as a proper basis for invoking the tariffs. Trade lawyers told us that potential issues arising from the use of IEEPA include the existence of tariff-making authority to address trade deficits under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, the "major questions" doctrine and the way in which the tariffs were calculated.
The Court of International Trade dismissed two customs cases, one brought by Meijer Distribution and one by Printing Textiles, for failure to prosecute. Both were put on the customs case management calendar but were not removed before the expiration of the "applicable period of time of removal." Meijer's case concerned whether its hand soap entries of Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 3401.30.50 were properly hit with Section 301 tariffs (see 2303130060). Meanwhile, the case from Printing Textiles, doing business as Berger Textiles, was on whether its coated fabric imports were properly subject to antidumping duties (see 2303150073). Neither attorney for either company responded to our requests for comment (Meijer Distribution v. United States, CIT # 23-00061) (Printing Textiles v. United States, CIT # 23-00062).
Rebar exporter Kaptan Demir argued that the U.S. failed to defend the Commerce Department's position in the 2021 countervailing duty review on steel concrete rebar from Turkey that exemptions from Turkey's Banking and Insurance Transactions Tax (BITT) are de jure specific. Filing a reply brief at the Court of International Trade on March 30, Kaptan said the government's position that Kaptan failed to provide evidence that every Turkish company is eligible for the exemption is "factually incorrect" (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #24-00096).
The U.S. told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that a recent CAFC decision, Pirelli Tyre Co. v. U.S., supports the government's position that the U.S. doesn't need to show a link between the "selection of management and the company’s export activities" in finding that a respondent has failed to show a lack of government control. Filing a notice of supplemental authority in a trio of cases, the government said Pirelli also supports its position that "respondents must meet the burden or persuasion to establish independence regardless of any evidentiary presumption" (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #s 23-2163, -2164) (China Manufacturers Alliance v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2391).