The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 28 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):
Country of origin cases
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit shouldn't merely affirm an antidumping duty case concerning whether the Commerce Department can make a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test, AD petitioners, led by the American Cast Iron Pipe, said in a June 28 submission to the appellate court. Though the Federal Circuit said that Commerce can't make such an adjustment in the Hyundai Steel v. U.S. case, the present action has a "much different factual posture that merits consideration," so litigation should continue, the petitioners said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1502).
Spent catalysts used for chemical production in China then sent back to the U.S. for reprocessing are not substantially transformed by their use in China, and remain of U.S. origin upon re-importation, CBP said in ruling HQ H323601.
The Office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts dropped its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case against Richard Boncy, a businessman and former Haitian ambassador-at-large, and Joseph Baptiste, a Haitian-American businessman. Filing a motion to dismiss a few days before the case's second trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the U.S. said that given the court's earlier decision vacating past convictions and the loss of recordings potentially containing exculpatory information, the case should be tossed. Judge Allison Burroughs dismissed the case in a text-only order June 28 (U.S. v. Roger Richard Boncy, D. Mass. #17-10305).
The Court of International Trade has the authority to order the Labor Department to certify that former AT&T call center employees are eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits, the former employees said in a June 23 brief. Responding to the court's request for further briefing on the issue of the court's authority, the plaintiffs said that the statutory text, purpose, history and practice all reveal that the court has doled out similar relief in the past and that the trade court can indeed issue the posited relief despite the lack of a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Former Employees of AT&T Services, Through Communications Workers of America Local 4123 v. United States, CIT #20-00075).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 24 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 World Trade Organization launched a Trade Connectivity Heatmap to provide a broad overview of the trade relationships between various economies across product categories, the WTO announced June 24. The map uses bilateral trade flow data from over 180 economies aggregated into around 70 product types to allow users to zero in on data for bilateral product-by-product relationships. The map allows for the organization of data based on four indicators: imports from a selected economy as a share of other economies' total imports in a chosen product category, exports meant for the selected economy as a share of other economies' total exports, the selected economy's imports originating from other economies as a share of the selected country's imports in the selected product category, and a selected country's exports meant for other economies as a share of the selected country's exports in the chosen product category.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Court of International Trade in a June 24 opinion denied plaintiff Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps' move to amend its complaint in an Enforce and Protect Act evasion case to explicitly contest CBP's denial of its protests over the xanthan gum entries subject to the EAPA decision. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the motion was clearly untimely and futile, and found that the delay in filing the amended complaint was undue and that the plaintiff still fails to identify the protests it is contesting.
The Court of International Trade granted importer DS Services of America's motion for a preliminary injunction in its case seeking to reinstate a previously granted exclusion from Section 301 China duties for water coolers classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8418.69.0120. The court's order suspends the liquidation of the plaintiff's unliquidated entries while allowing the U.S. to continue to collect Section 301 duties, as the injunction is structured like a statutory injunction routinely entered in antidumping and countervailing duty cases (DS Services of America v. United States, CIT #22-00157).