The Commerce Department properly selected Mexico over Malaysia as the surrogate nation in an antidumping duty review, the Court of International Trade held in an Aug. 5 opinion. Ruling that Mexico served as a significant producer of identical merchandise and that the selection of the Mexican financial statements was backed by reasonable evidence, Judge Timothy Reif upheld Commerce's determination.
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A Court of International Trade case over importer Greenlight Organic's alleged fraud in misclassifying its knit garments should be dropped since the statute of limitations ran out, Greenlight said in an Aug. 3 brief. After the court ruled in 2018 that the statute of limitations had some lingering questions, Greenlight said it has procured enough evidence for the court to now rule in its favor and that the U.S.'s fraud case is effectively time barred (United States v. Greenlight Organic, Inc. et al., CIT #17-00031).
A complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan challenging the seizure of CBD and hemp accessories as "drug paraphernalia" should be scrapped since the importer did not exhaust administrative remedies before challenging the seizure, the Department of Justice argued in an Aug. 2 motion to dismiss. The case, brought by Michigan-based vaporizer, rolling paper and pipe importer ASHH, pushed for the return of the CBD and hemp goods under Rule 41(g) -- a legal authority CBP said the district court didn't have, per U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit precedent (ASHH, Inc. v. United States, E.D. Mich. #21-11210).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department unlawfully selected Malaysia as its surrogate country in an antidumping duty administrative review and the decision should be remanded by the Court of International Trade for reconsideration of selecting Romania instead, plaintiffs in a case challenging the review said in July 30 comments opposing the first remand results. Seeing as the remand itself recognizes the superiority of the Romanian data and acknowledges certain input data from Malaysia is aberrational, the court should hold that Commerce's reliance on Malaysia as the surrogate nation is unlawful, the plaintiffs said (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co., Ltd. et al. v. United States, CIT #20-00007).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas properly struck down the crude oil export tax under 26 U.S.C. Section 4611(b) as unconstitutional, commodity trading and logistics house Trafigura Trading said in its July 30 brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The tax on crude oil exports violates the U.S. Constitution's Export Clause banning any taxes on exports, the company said. As a result, the district court appropriately awarded Trafigura a $4.2 million refund for its taxes paid, the company said (Trafigura Trading LLC v. U.S., 5th Cir. #21-20127).
The Court of International Trade stayed the liquidation of steel and aluminum "derivative" imports potentially subject to the Section 232 national security tariffs, in an Aug. 2 decision. Due in part to a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Transpacific Steel LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT permitted the U.S.'s motion for a stay of liquidation for entries that would be assessed the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum derivatives.
The U.S. requested the chance to take another look at an Enforce and Protect Act investigation to consider documents that were not sent from one CBP office to another, in a July 30 motion for remand in the Court of International Trade. The agency also sought the remand in light of the court's decision in Royal Brush v. United States, in which CIT held that CBP failed to provide adequate public summaries of business confidential information (BCI) (see 2012020050). The plaintiff in the case, Leco Supply, opposed the remand request, arguing that it is "too broad to be justifiable" under the court's standards for allowing remands (Leco Supply, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00136).