EAPA Respondent Cooperated 'Too Much' for CBP, Furniture Importer Tells Trade Court
The Enforce and Protect Act case involving Aspects Furniture International is not one of a lack of cooperation, "but instead one of 'too much' cooperation for CBP to handle, so much so that CBP chose to abuse its discretion" in ignoring the record completely, Aspects told the Court of International Trade. Submitting opposing comments on CBP's remand results, the bedroom furniture importer said CBP made "general, conclusory" explanations of its evasion decision based on the fact that it saw employees of Aspects' Chinese satellite office, Aspects Nantong, destroying information (Aspects Furniture International v. United States, CIT # 20-03824).
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CBP said it saw this destruction of evidence on two occasions in response to questions from the verifiers. The trade court remanded CBP's finding that Aspects evaded antidumping duties on wooden bedroom furniture from China, questioning the truthfulness of the evasion evidence (see 2211290078). On remand, CBP said it has no reason to question the truthfulness or credibility of its employees, adding that they are subject to a code of conduct (see 2303300049).
Aspects found this explanation to be general and "not tailored to the specifics of this EAPA Investigation or its underlying facts." Clarifying that it is not accusing the CBP employees of making up this evidence intentionally, Aspects said CBP had nearly two years to present the importer with the evidence destruction claim, leaving the company "incapacitated to properly rebut such claim due to EAPA time constraints." Aspects took issue with CBP's failure to present these allegations earlier, including during the actual verification visit at which Aspects' counsel was present.
"In other words, CBP treated this allegedly 'egregious' destruction of evidence as a non-issue during the verification visit, hid it from AFI and its counsel for almost two (2) years, at which point it gave Aspects no real chance of rebutting or explaining these alleged incidents of evidence destruction," the brief said.
CBP only pointed to one piece of information that was destroyed: container loading plans. Aspects claimed that given that this information is "purely logistical" and "ancillary to the importation of goods and with no individual value to CBP operations," the company arguably didn't need to present it with the entry summary packet.
CBP justified its ultimate evasion finding premised on the destruction of evidence claim, finding that the destroyed evidence prevented it from fully understanding the scope of Aspects' Nantong operations. "However, CBP was able to, and factually did verify which products came from which manufacturers through evaluating the entry-related documentation it was provided with by Aspects and Wuxi Yushea," the brief said. "The issue here is not CBP’s inability to verify the information placed on the EAPA record due to Aspects’ alleged lack of cooperation or destruction of evidence, but rather CBP’s unwillingness to properly analyze the thousands of documents that it was actually presented with and draw reasonable, reasoned conclusions."