The Court of International Trade ordered that a status conference be held in a case seeking an import ban on fish from New Zealand's West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries under the Marine Mammal Protection Act after the plaintiffs filed a stipulation of dismissal (Sea Shepherd New Zealand v. U.S., CIT # 20-00112).

An importer of airplane parts brought a complaint to the Court of International Trade on Aug. 31, saying that an aeronautical control box produced in Illinois and imported to Japan should have been classified as an American good, not a Japanese one (Aeronautical Systems, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 20-00157).

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

A Chinese exporter of multilayered wood flooring argued Aug. 29 that its 16 input suppliers weren’t under government control. The government policies in question didn’t contradict a Chinese government claim that party officials didn’t hold any ownership positions in a number of input suppliers, it said (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00136).

The U.S. again argued that Byungmin Chae's case at the Court of International Trade challenging one question on his customs broker license exam should be dismissed under the doctrine of res judicata, which calls for the dismissal of cases already settled by the court. The Nebraska resident filed suit after his previous case, which he took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, saw him fall just one question shy of a passing grade on the April 2018 exam (see 2401230031) (Byungmin Chae v. U.S., CIT # 24-00086).

Southwest Airlines argued at the Court of International Trade that the U.S. violated the rules of statutory interpretation when it claimed that the airline isn't entitled to keep Customs Passenger Processing Fees paid by its customers on canceled tickets. Southwest said it "harmonizes" all the sections of the governing statute, 19 U.S.C. Section 58c, while the U.S. reads the law's collection provision in a way that isolates it from the rest of the statute (Southwest Airlines v. U.S, CIT # 22-00141).

A Vietnamese exporter of light-walled rectangular pipe and tube pushed back against the U.S. claim that the Commerce Department’s rejection of a questionnaire that missed a deadline by a few hours, and its subsequent use of adverse facts available for the exporter, had been warranted and wasn't an abuse of discretion (Hoa Phat Steel Pipe Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 23-00248).

South Korean exporter Hyundai Steel Co. opposed the Commerce Department's finding on remand that the Korean government's full allocation of carbon emission permits under the Korean Emissions Trading System (K-ETS) during the 2019 review of the countervailing duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from South Korea was de facto specific. On remand, Commerce switched from a de jure to a de facto specificity finding (Hyundai Steel Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00170).

Importer Precision Components filed a reply brief on Aug. 30 at the Court of International Trade in an antidumping scope case, telling the court that the Commerce Department characterized a "raw material as a component and thus impermissibly brought" the materials within the scope of the AD order on tapered roller bearings from China. The record clearly says "the materials at issue are not bearing components or parts of bearings and could not be used in the production of bearings absent significant physical processes performed on the raw materials" (Precision Components v. United States, CIT # 23-00218).

Exporters Shandong Dongyue Chemical Co. and Huantai Dongyue International Trade Co. filed a stipulation of dismissal regarding their claims in a case challenging the antidumping duty investigation on pentafluoroethane (R-125) from China. The case was originally filed by Shandong Dongyue, Huantai Dongyue and a third exporter, Zhejiang Sanmei Chemical Ind. Co. (see 2210270069), and the two exporters dropping their claims said the dismissal only includes their arguments and not those of Sanmei. The exporters brought the case to argue that the Commerce Department illegally valued the factors of production of the intermediate product for a refrigeration, anhydrous hydrofluoric acid, rather than valuing the refrigerant's reported factors of production (Zhejiang Sanmei Chemical Ind. Co. v. United States, CIT #22-00103).