International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

CBP granted an importer's protest that an automatic aerosol dispenser is classified as an appliance part, rather than as an appliance itself, in a recently released ruling.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 5-11:

The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee said that getting Chinese shipments banned from the de minimis program is how he'd like to close out his congressional career. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., is retiring at the end of 2024. "I think we will see this moving forward, if only for the animus toward China" in Congress, he said.

National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jay Timmons said that all of his 250 members want liberalized trade, and said he didn't understand why a simple issue like the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill has been hung up in partisan conflict for three years.

The statutory basis for the U.S. trade representative's lists 3 and 4A tariffs -- Section 307 of the Trade Act of 1930 -- only allows for a "modification" of existing duties and not a "radical and unprecedented seven-fold escalation launching an unbounded trade war with China," appellants in the massive lawsuit challenging the Section 301 tariffs on China told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 12 (HMTX Industries v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1891).

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

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that talking about tariffs more than other aspects of trade policy is, to a large degree, "a red herring," and said reducing U.S. trade policy "down to a conversation about tariffs is really unfair."

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Feb. 7-8 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):

The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: