Importer Royal Brush Manufacturing failed to show that the Court of International Trade wrongly held that CBP did not violate the company's due process rights in an Enforce and Protect Act investigation, the U.S. argued in a June 9 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In its opening brief, Royal Brush failed to cite "any legal authority" to back its theory that the trade court erred in shielding the business confidential information (BCI) from disclosure, DOJ said (Royal Brush Manufacturing Inc. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1226).
Country of origin cases
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 10 order invited the U.S. to file an amicus brief in a case on whether the Commerce Department can conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews. The plaintiff-appellants, led by Fontaine Inc., filed their opening brief in February, seeking statutory cover for Commerce to perform the expedited reviews (Committee Overseeing Action for Lumber International Trade Investigations or Negotiations v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1021).
The Court of International Trade in a June 1 opinion made public June 9 dismissed a case seeking Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusions brought by exporter Borusan Mannesmann and importer Gulf Coast Express Pipeline. Judge Timothy Reif said that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction since the subject entries are unliquidated. The court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show that CBP's decision not to issue refunds before liquidation constitutes a protestable decision.
An importer can use fallback methods of valuation for replacement parts or refurbished items when it reasonably does not have access to pricing information, CBP headquarters said in a recently released ruling. In HQ H321592, dated Feb. 4 and publicly released June 6, CBP ruled that used goods returned to the U.S. after undergoing repairs abroad can be appraised using straight-line depreciation and cost of repairs and that replacement goods imported into the U.S. pursuant to a warranty claim can be appraised using the transaction value of similar new goods.
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 three related opinions, rejected reconsideration bids from a series of domestic manufacturers and producers of a wide range of goods covered by antidumping duty orders for the court to vacate or modify certain claims as being time barred. The reconsideration motions concern whether certain claims seeking payouts of delinquency interest under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 were timely filed. Judge Timothy Stanceu said that the plaintiffs "have not put forth a valid reason why the court should vacate or modify the decision."
The EU General Court in a June 1 judgment dismissed an application from sanctioned individual Yevgeniy Prigozhin to revoke the European Council acts including and maintaining his designation under the Libya sanctions regime. Prigozhin was originally listed due to his standing as a Russian businessman with links to the paramilitary Wagner Group. He filed his case to argue that the council relied on inadmissible evidence to make the sanctions decisions. The court rejected this claim, holding that the evidence, which includes UN reports and press articles, appears sound and reliable and thus contains "some probative value."
The Commerce Department altered the basis for its use of adverse facts available on remand at the Court of International Trade in an antidumping case after the court said that antidumping respondent Dalian Meisen Woodworking's false advertisements cannot be used as grounds for AFA. Submitting its remand results on June 6, Commerce said that after issuing a host of new questionnaires to Meisen, including a questionnaire in lieu of on-site verification, it changed its bases for AFA, now basing it on the respondent's failure to provide "critical information" in the questionnaire and all of its U.S. affiliates (Dalian Meisen Woodworking Co. v. United States, CIT #20-00109).
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Even if the Commerce Department finds that solar panels from Southeast Asia are circumventing antidumping and countervailing duty actions against Chinese exports, no AD/CVD will be collected for the next two years, the Biden administration announced on June 6. Trade lawyers were astonished by the action, which is based on the authority to temporarily suspend AD/CVD when imports are needed to respond to natural disasters "or other emergencies."