A recent Court of International Trade opinion left prior court precedent on the question of what constitutes a substantial transformation "dead, or on life support," an analysis from Neville Peterson said. The result is that importers who have been told by CBP that the country of origin of their goods is the country of origin of the goods' major inputs or essential components will likely seek reconsideration of those rulings, seeking refunds on Section 301 China tariffs in particular, the firm said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) and Riverside Plywood, two plaintiffs in a countervailing duty case, submitted a notice of supplemental authority saying the Commerce Department has shown it can verify non-use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program (EBCP) even without information from the Chinese government. Because Commerce has done so in a different CVD investigation following the submission of standard supplemental questionnaire responses, verification is possible in the current case, the plaintiffs told the Court of International Trade (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT #20-03885).
The Commerce Department's decision to deny a scope ruling request is not a judicially reviewable action, the Department of Justice said in its motion to dismiss a case brought by three companies at the Court of International Trade. CIT jurisdiction will instead be established at the end of a changed circumstances review requested by the plaintiffs, DOJ said (Zhejiang Yuhua Timber Co. v. United States, CIT #21-00502).
CBP ignored the Court of International Trade's ruling that it needs some finding of culpability before determining that importer Diamond Tools Technology evaded the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on diamond sawblades from China, DTT said in a Feb. 28 brief. Instead, CBP just ignored the court's definitions of the terms "false" and "omission" and illogically claimed that the customs penalty law's establishment of specific degrees of culpability negates the Enforce and Protect Act's culpability requirement, DTT argued (Diamond Tools Technology v. United States, CIT #20-00060).
A Feb. 24 Court of International Trade decision could result in "inching toward a saner and more legally sound approach to origin determinations" involving the substantial transformation test, customs lawyer Larry Friedman of Barnes Richardson said in a blog post Feb. 24. The language in the decision is "generally favorable for a simplified and more reasonable approach to origin," after years of focus on pre-determined end use of assembled components following the trade court's unappealed 2016 decision in Energizer.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Section 232 national security duties are not "ordinary customs duties" and shouldn't be deducted from an antidumping duty respondent's export price and constructed export price, exporter Borusan Mannesmann said in a Feb. 25 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Instead, Section 232 duties should be found to be "special duties" because they were imposed by a specific congressional delegation of authority to the president, the brief said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., CIT #22-00057).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted American steel giant U.S. Steel's request to appear as an amicus in a key case on whether the Commerce Department can make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test in antidumping proceedings (Hyundai Steel Company v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1748). In the case, brought by Hyundai Steel Company, the Federal Circuit found that no such adjustment was permitted by the statute, cementing a long string of Court of International Trade rulings saying the same thing (see 2112100039). The petitioner of the relevant AD order, Welspun, filed for a full court rehearing, prompting U.S. Steel's amicus bid (see 2202250034).
The government's right to collect on a bond against a surety doesn't accrue until the surety breaches the bond, the Department of Justice said in a Feb. 28 motion for judgment in a case seeking to collect on a bond that covers imports entered during 2002-2006. Since the terms of the bond say that the surety must pay "as demanded by CBP," the statute of limitations on which to file suit to collect payment runs from when CBP demands payment, the brief said (United States v. Aegis Security Insurance Co., CIT #20-03628).