Lawyers from both Norca Engineered Products and DOJ tried to convince Court of International Trade Judge Jane Restani that their preferred definition of "backhoe" was the correct one, during June 23 oral arguments (Norca Engineered Products v. U.S., CIT # 21-00305).
Ben Perkins
Ben Perkins, Assistant Editor, is a reporter with International Trade Today and its sister publications, Trade Law Daily and Export Compliance Daily, where he covers sanctions, court rulings, and other international trade issues. He previously worked as a trade analyst for a Washington D.C. advisory firm. Ben holds a B.A. in English from the University of New Hampshire and an M.A. in International Relations from American University. Ben joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2022.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Previous Protest Approvals Are 'Decisions' Requiring Notice to Overturn, Tent Importer Argues at CIT
Pop-up tents designed for backpacking should be duty-free "backpacking tents" instead of other" tents, Ohio-based tent importer Under the Weather (UTW) said in its June 23 complaint at the Court of International Trade. The company is challenging CBP's classification of its imported tents at a higher duty rate than the company had used for eight years and despite an earlier protest approval that seemed to have affirmed UTW's preferred classification (Under the Weather v. U.S., CIT # 21-00211).
Separate rate antidumping duty respondent Dalian Hualing Wood moved for judgment, arguing that the Commerce Department violated the law when it carried out a bona fide analysis of Dalian, the company said in its June 22 motion. Commerce compounded the error by treating Hualing's sale as non-bona fide in the AD review while treating it as bona fide in the CVD review, Hualing said. "The same sale cannot be bona fide in one proceeding and not the other -- statutory criteria apply to both ADD and CVD proceedings" (Dalian Hualing Wood Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00334).
DOJ on June 21 urged the Court of International Trade to uphold the Commerce Department's calculations of benchmark prices for plywood and veneer, as well as its use of adverse inferences on the use of the Chinese Export Buyer's Credit Program, in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00210).
It was "not appropriate" for the Commerce Department to conclude that price differences between an Emirati exporter's sales across four quarters were due to differential pricing, several Emirati producers and exporters of circular welded carbon-quality steel pipe said in a June 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Universal Tube and Plastic Industries v. U.S., CIT # 23-00113).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A supermodule for use in hydrogen fuel-cell power plants is a part an electric generator and not a water gas generator, DOJ said in a June 20 reply brief at the Court of International Trade. Importer HyAxium's arguments to the contrary do not consider the supermodule in its entirety and the unit does not generate water gas, DOJ said (HyAxium v. U.S., CIT # 21-00057).
The Commerce Department incorrectly concluded that exemptions from Turkey's Bank and Insurance Transactions Tax (BITT) were countervailable subsidies, in the final results of the 2020 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey, exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret said in a June 21 complaint. Kaptan also took issue with Commerce's valuation benchmark for industrial land in Turkey (Kaptan Demir Çelik Endüstrisi ve Ticaret A.Ş. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00131).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 21 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):