The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP announced an Enforce and Protect Act investigation on whether Suzhou Quality Import and Export had evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China and imposed interim measures. The investigation followed a January allegation by the Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee, which said Suzhou Quality had entered Chinese-origin aluminum extrusions subject to the AD/CVD into the U.S. without declaring them subject to those orders or paying the required cash deposits.
The Commerce department’s decision to use the all-others rate from an earlier antidumping duty investigation on quartz surface products to calculate the rate for the non-selected respondents in the first administrative review should be remanded to the agency, AD petitioner Cambria said in a June 30 motion at the Court of International Trade (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate on July 5 in importer PrimeSource Building Products' suit on President Donald Trump's move to expand Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to include derivative products. The move comes after the court rejected PrimeSource's request to stay the mandate pending a final disposition by the U.S. Supreme Court on any petition for a writ of certiorari (see 2306270037). In the case, the Federal Circuit said that Trump legally imposed the tariffs beyond procedural time limits, ruling that such action can be taken if it is in line with the original tariffs' plan of action (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 21-2066).
Tomato exporter Bioparques de Occidente failed to address many of its claims before the Commerce Department in a case on the agency's decision to resume an antidumping duty investigation after the termination of a suspension agreement, the government said in a reply brief. Issuing the brief after the trade court said Bioparques has the jurisdiction to challenge the decision, the U.S. addressed the remainder of the exporter's eight claims, arguing that Commerce's continuation of the investigation was "properly conducted" (Bioparques de Occidente v. United States, CIT # 19-00204).
Importer Amsted Rail Co. filed a joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal in a conflict-of-interest suit at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit against the International Trade Commission for not barring attorney Daniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from an AD/CVD injury proceeding. The Court of International Trade previously dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, pointing out that the case could potentially be refiled once the injury determination wraps up (see 2211160057) (Amsted Rail Co. v. ITC, Fed. Cir. # 23-1355).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a June 30 order accepted the amended opening brief and addendum filed by Kazakh exporter Tau-Ken Temir in a case on the Commerce Department's use of adverse facts available due to missed filing deadlines in an antidumping duty review. In submitting its amended brief, TKT submitted a version of its original opening brief with corrections sought by the clerk of the court and also a version with these corrections plus corrections additionally requested by the exporter. The appellate court accepted only the first form of these submissions (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
CBP reversed an evasion determination against Scioto Valley Woodworking, after initially having found that Scioto had imported Chinese wooden cabinets and vanities by transshipment through Malaysia using adverse facts available. Upon review, CBP found the use of AFA was unwarranted and said evidence showed the manufacturer, Alno, could and did produce wooden cabinets and vanities in Malaysia.
The government incorrectly claimed that there are two separate jurisdictional paths for contesting Enforce and Protect Act decisions, appellants Ascension Chemicals, UMD Solutions, Crude Chem Technology and Glob Energy Corp. argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (All One God Faith v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1078).
The Commerce Department stuck with its use of the Cohen's d test as part of its effort to root out "masked" dumping in an antidumping review after adding certain academic literature to the record as instructed by the Court of International Trade. Submitting its remand results to the trade court June 27, Commerce said certain statistical assumptions -- normality of the distribution, equal variances and around the same sample size -- don't limit the agency's use of the d test, given that it used the entire population of data as opposed to a sample (Nexteel Co. v. U.S., CIT Consol. # 18-00083).