The Court of International Trade on June 7 upheld the Commerce Department's classification of the surrogate values for aluminum ash byproduct and rolling oil inputs in the first antidumping duty administrative review on aluminum foil from China, as well as the agency's decision to use Maersk data to calculate surrogate freight costs and its refusal to grant respondent Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co. a double remedies adjustment for input subsidies the respondent said were countervailable.
Country of origin cases
The Court of International Trade improperly upheld CBP's incorrect classification of conduit tubing imported from Mexico as steel tubing instead of insulated fittings, Shamrock Building Materials said in its June 5 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Shamrock Building Materials v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1648)
A rehearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision in PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., upholding President Donald Trump's decision to expand Section 232 duties on "derivatives" of steel and aluminum products, is "unwarranted," the U.S. argued in a reply brief. While the petitioners, led by PrimeSource, continue to "demur," the U.S. said that the Federal Circuit's decision is "consistent with" Supreme Court and past Federal Circuit decisions, namely Transpacific Steel v. U.S., in which the court said that the president can take action beyond the procedural time limits set in the statute as long as it comports with the original duties' plan of action (PrimeSource Building Products v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 21-2066).
The Court of International Trade granted a request by antidumping respondent Ellwood City Forge to reply to remand comments in an antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blocks from Germany. CIT Judge Stephen Vaden granted the May 15 request over objections by both DOJ and intervenor Edelstahl Siegen (Ellwood City Forge v. U.S., CIT # 21-00077).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated June 2 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 Commerce Department correctly followed a Court of International Trade remand order when it declined to use a mistakenly chosen respondent's individually calculated rate in its calculation of the non-selected respondents rate, instead basing the non-selected rate on the individual rate for a single mandatory respondent, DOJ said in its May 31 remand comments at the Court of International Trade (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry v. U.S., CIT # 20-03885).
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's recent decision on the customs classification of frozen fruit mixtures supports the government's arguments in a customs spat on importer Second Nature Design's imports of dried botanical items used in home decor, the U.S. said in a notice of supplemental authority. Acknowledging that the trade court's recent opinion in Nature's Touch Frozen Foods v. U.S. is not final, the government nevertheless said that Judge Stephen Vaden's opinion backs its case (Second Nature Designs v. United States, CIT # 17-00271).
CBP illegally failed to apply exclusions for Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to eight shipments of hot wrought steel round bars even though the exclusions were granted after the shipments entered the U.S., importer Saarsteel argued in a complaint last week at the Court of International Trade. The company said it is CBP's practice to allow an importer to claim a granted exclusion via a post-summary correction or a protest when the exclusion was granted after the entry was made but "relates back to a submission date covering the entry" (Saarsteel Inc. v. United States, CIT # 21-00271).