Court of International Trade Judge Gary Katzmann extended until Nov. 21 his temporary restraining order barring the government from ending an exemption for bifacial panels from safeguard duties on solar cells, he said in an order issued Nov. 6. The temporary hold had been scheduled to expire Nov. 7, but Katzmann said he is still considering plaintiff Invenergy’s motion to amend an existing injunction to stop President Donald Trump’s Oct. 10 presidential proclamation on the safeguard duties from taking effect. The proclamation had provided for termination of the bifacial exemption effective Oct. 25, but was blocked by Katzmann’s temporary restraining order the day before it took effect (see 2010260025).
Court of International Trade
The United States Court of International Trade is a federal court which has national jurisdiction over civil actions regarding the customs and international trade laws of the United States. The Court was established under Article III of the Constitution by the Customs Courts Act of 1980. The Court consists of nine judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is located in New York City. The Court has jurisdiction throughout the United States and has exclusive jurisdictional authority to decide civil action pertaining to international trade against the United States or entities representing the United States.
The U.S. government is moving too slowly in the processing of refunds of duties paid on imported steel from Turkey that were subject to additional Section 232 tariffs, Transpacific Steel said in a Nov. 4 filing with the Court of International Trade. Transpacific was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over the tariffs. A three-judge CIT panel ruled that the tariffs were improperly imposed because they were put in place after the statutory timelines for Section 232 tariffs (see 2007140046). A government appeal filed in September with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is awaiting a ruling.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 26 - Nov. 1:
The government must go beyond merely asserting intentional misclassification even when dealing with a nonresponsive defendant, Court of International Trade Judge Mark Barnett said in an Oct. 30 ruling. The Department of Justice requested a default judgment in a case against NYWL Enterprises. DOJ alleged that the company purposefully and misclassified 107 entries of Siamese coaxial cable, and sought “a penalty in the amount of $3,760,070.00 (equal to eight times the total lost revenue) plus interest" for fraud.
The Commerce Department is amending countervailing duty cash deposit rates for some exporters subject to CV duties on crystalline silicon solar cells from China (C-570-980), it said in a notice implementing a recent Court of International Trade decision that invalidated rates the agency set in the final results of an administrative review it issued in 2018 (see 1807200007 and 1810290015). Commerce is lowering cash deposit rates for Canadian Solar International, ET Solar Industry Limited and Hangzhou Zhejiang University Sunny Energy as a result of the decision, according to the notice released Oct. 28. Changes are applicable to entries on or after Oct. 29, as follows:
The International Trade Commission updated the tariff schedule late Oct. 26 to restore an exemption for bifacial panels from safeguard duties on crystalline solar photovoltaic cells pursuant an order from the Court of International Trade. Revision 25 to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States again adds U.S. note 18(c)(iii)(15), which provides for the exemption, to subchapter III of chapter 99. The provision had been removed in the prior HTS revision (see 2010260025).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 19-25:
The International Trade Commission updated the tariff schedule late Oct. 26 to restore an exemption for bifacial panels from safeguard duties on crystaline solar photovoltaic cells pursuant an order from the Court of International Trade. The exemption had been eliminated under an Oct. 10 presidential proclamation, but the CIT issued a temporary restraining order Oct. 24 that blocked the proclamation from taking effect. The court order specifically ordered the government to make no changes to the tariff schedule that would end the bifacial panel exemption.
CBP issued a CSMS message Oct. 26 announcing changes to the tariff schedule to implement a recent proclamation amending safeguard duties on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, including the elimination of an exemption for bifacial panels (see 2010130028). The announcement came despite a last-minute court order blocking the proclamation’s withdrawal of the bifacial panel exclusion. The CSMS message does not mention the court order. A CBP spokesperson said the agency "is in the process of issuing additional guidance on this subject." The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Justice Department didn’t comment.
Law firm Husch Blackwell has no objection to a Department of Justice proposal to designate the first-filed HMTX Industries-Jasco Products complaint as a test case in the massive Section 301 litigation, but “there is no reason that it should be chosen as the only test case without further analysis,” it said Oct. 22 in a partial opposition to the government’s Oct. 19 motion for case management procedures (see 2010200022). It told the Court of International Trade that it represents 75 “individually named plaintiffs” of the “approximately 6000 plus” importers seeking to vacate the lists 3 and 4A tariff rulemakings and get the duties refunded.