The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Country of origin cases
The Supreme Court of the U.S., in an Aug. 1 order, granted the government's bid for an additional month to reply to importer PrimeSource Building Products' petition for a writ of certiorari on President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 duties onto steel and aluminum "derivatives." The government's reply will now be due Sept. 25, instead of Aug. 24 as originally planned. The government said its heavy case load warranted the delay.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an errata in its Royal Brush Manufacturing v. U.S. opinion. The court removed the word "not" from the sentence that originally read, "The government nonetheless argues that confidential business information cannot not be disclosed absent a statute or regulation authorizing a protective order." In the opinion, the appellate court said that CBP violated importer Royal Brush's due process rights by failing to provide it access to business confidential information in an Enforce and Protect Act proceeding (see 2307270038).
A recently concluded case at the Court of International Trade was a serious contest between the power of the court and the finality of liquidation, customs lawyer Larry Friedman of Barnes Richardson said in an Aug. 2 blog post. The case at issue was Target v. U.S., in which Target attempted to reverse a reliquidation order on improperly liquidated ironing tables from China (see 2108160028). Reversing the order would "elevate the principle of finality" of liquidation over the power of the trade court, Judge Leo Gordon said in his July opinion (see 2307200049).
The Court of International Trade erred when it signed off on the Commerce Department's refusal to conduct a full administrative review of and apply adverse facts available to exporter Jin Tiong Electrical Materials Manufacturer despite issuing a questionnaire, importer Repwire and Jin Tiong said in an Aug. 3 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Repwire v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1933).
Andrew Adams, the DOJ attorney at the head of Task Force KleptoCapture -- the interagency body charged with enforcing U.S. sanctions on Russia -- left the department, he said on his LinkedIn page. Adams will return to his role as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which he originally assumed in 2013. He was appointed to lead the task force in March of last year after leading the SDNY Attorney's Office's Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit. Bloomberg reported that Adams will be replaced by Michael Khoo and David Lim, both of whom have worked in the task force since its early days. DOJ didn't comment.
No explanation could make the Commerce Department's use of the Cohen's d test, used to root out "masked" dumping, reasonable, the Canadian government and eight Canadian exporters argued in a proposed amicus brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Seeking to tack their arguments onto the case in which the appellate court originally questioned the agency's use of the test, the amici said that Commerce is not using the d test "in any coherent sense" (Stupp Corp. v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1663).
The Court of International Trade should toss a case from Turkish exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari (Erdemir) challenging the International Trade Commission's decision not to reconsider its injury finding on hot-rolled steel from Turkey for lack of jurisdiction, four U.S. steel companies said. Filing a motion to dismiss at the trade court on July 31, Cleveland-Cliffs, Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics and SSAB Enterprises argued that Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, is not the proper jurisdiction for the case since Erdemir could have sought relief under Section 1581(c) (Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari v. U.S. International Trade Commission, CIT # 22-00349).
The U.S. asked for more time to file its reply to importer PrimeSource's writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court in its case challenging President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 steel and aluminum duties onto "derivative" products. The government asked for another month, until Sept. 25, to complete its brief, explaining its response was delayed due to the "heavy press of earlier assigned cases to the attorneys handling this matter." The brief is due Aug. 24.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: