The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated May 1 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):

Counterweights for mini-excavators are "backhoe" parts and should not be excluded from Section 301 tariffs, DOJ argued in an April 28 brief at the Court of International Trade. The brief bolstered the government's January motion for judgment (see 2301240063) by arguing that the Bobcat mini-excavators that the counterweights are "designed for and exclusively used on" are themselves "backhoes" (Norca Engineered Products v. U.S., CIT # 21-00305)

Heat-treated forged steel rods imported by ME Global are properly classified in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule as "other bars" not further worked than forged, rather than in the importer's preferred classification as "grinding balls and similar articles for mills," the Court of International Trade ruled in a May 2 decision.

There’s no need to compel Google to produce documents “that it has already agreed to produce,” Wilson Sonsini counsel for Google wrote U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter response Wednesday (docket 1:21-md-03010). The plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation challenging Google’s alleged anticompetitive hold on the digital ad tech market wrote the judge April 21 seeking to compel Google to produce 800,000 documents it produced for DOJ’s digital ad tech investigation but has withheld from the MDL plaintiffs (see 2304240002). There’s also no need for the court “to accelerate the timeline on which Google will produce these documents, as Google anticipates producing them before the deadline for substantial completion of document productions,” Wilson Sonsini attorney Justina Sessions told the judge. “Google is working diligently to produce these and other documents,” she said. The documents at issue are responsive to some of the 301 production requests that the MDL plaintiffs “served on the last day they were permitted to do so,” she said. By the time the plaintiffs filed their pre-motion letter seeking production of these documents without delay, “they knew that Google had sent the documents to a vendor for processing and that Google would then promptly produce them before the substantial completion deadline,” said Sessions. The plaintiffs “appear to take issue with the amount of time that it takes to process the documents for production,” she said. “Preparing these approximately 800,000 documents for production takes processing and quality-control-checking time,” she said. “However, this process is already underway by Google’s document vendor. Google will produce the documents at issue promptly once they are prepared.”

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of April 10-16 and 17-23.

The National Taxpayers Union, a group that advocates for lower taxes, is urging members of the House of Representatives to vote against a resolution that would overturn the administration's decision to delay antidumping and countervailing duties on solar panels from Southeast Asia that the Commerce Department says circumvent an earlier order against Chinese panels.

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

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

Importer SXP Schulz Xtruded Products needed a protest to properly challenge CBP's failure to apply a Section 232 duty exclusion on four entries of its steel forged and turned bars, the Court of International Trade ruled. Dismissing the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that SXP could have filed for an extension of liquidation while it was waiting for the Commerce Department to correct the erroneous exclusion it issued or simply have filed a protest, which would have queued up jurisdiction under Section 1581(a).

At a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing, Democrats talked up their legislative proposals -- two bipartisan, two not -- as answers to confronting China's trade agenda, and expressed skepticism of witnesses' advocacy for ending permanent normal trade relations with China, while some Republicans expressed interest in that approach, and one seemed cautious.