The Commerce Department should have reopened the record during its voluntary remand period to consider the question of affiliation between antidumping duty respondent OCTAL and one of its U.S. customers, OCTAL told the Court of International Trade in a Dec. 22 reply brief. Since Commerce raised the issue so late in the AD review, the record wasn't "high quality" and OCTAL didn't have a chance to properly respond to the affiliation accusations, OCTAL said (OCTAL v. U.S., CIT #20-03697).
Country of origin cases
Section 232 allows the president to expand tariff action beyond procedural time limits laid out in the law, as he did when he expanded the tariffs to cover steel and aluminum derivatives over a year after the tariffs were initially imposed, the Department of Justice told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its Jan. 3 brief. Relying heavily on a recent CAFC opinion on an increase of tariffs on Turkish steel, DOJ said the president is allowed to expand Section 232 tariffs to products beyond the ones laid out in the original commerce secretary report as long as it's part of the original "plan of action" (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-2066).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP misclassified Mitsubishi Power America's supported selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts, resulting in the entries wrongly being assessed Section 301 duties, the importer argued in a Jan. 4 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Instead, the supported SCR catalysts fit under a different Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading that was granted an exclusion to the Section 301 China tariffs by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the importer said (Mitsubishi Power Americas v. U.S., CIT #21-00573).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted antidumping duty petitioner Welspun Tubular's bid for an extension of time to request a full-court rehearing of a key decision. The petitioner now has until Feb. 8 to ask the full Federal Circuit to reconsider a decision which found that the Commerce Department can no longer make a particular market situation adjustment to an AD respondent's cost of production in a sales-below-cost test for the purposes of calculating normal value (see 2112100039). Petitions for en banc rehearings were originally due Jan. 9. Welspun won the extension after characterizing the appeal as one that is "critically important" to the petitioner and many other domestic producers of goods subject to ADD orders (see 2112290027) (Hyundai Steel Company v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #21-1748).
The Commerce Department violated the law when it initiated an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation into quartz surface products from India since it didn't have the requisite industry support, importer M S International told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its Dec. 20 opening brief. Urging the appellate court to overturn a Court of International Trade decision that found that Commerce legally interpreted what constitutes a "producer" of QSPs, MSI argued that Commerce erred by excluding fabricators from the industry support calculation (Pokarna Engineered Stone Limited v. U.S., Fed. Cir. #22-1077).
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 reassigned five customs cases brought by Continental Automotive Systems from Judge Timothy Stanceu to Judge Jane Restani, in a Dec. 28 order signed by Judge Mark Barnett. Originally filed in 2017 and 2018, the cases concern the proper Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification of Continental's probe element of nitric oxide sensors -- a mass-produced element of NOx sensors, designed for use in consumer passenger vehicles and trucks. Four of the five were placed under a test case. The Department of Justice filed its cross motion for summary judgment Dec. 22 (Continental Automotive Systems v. U.S., CIT #18-00026). The order didn't give a reason for the reassignment.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: