The Court of International Trade has the authority to order the Labor Department to certify that former AT&T call center employees are eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits, the former employees said in a June 23 brief. Responding to the court's request for further briefing on the issue of the court's authority, the plaintiffs said that the statutory text, purpose, history and practice all reveal that the court has doled out similar relief in the past and that the trade court can indeed issue the posited relief despite the lack of a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Former Employees of AT&T Services, Through Communications Workers of America Local 4123 v. United States, CIT #20-00075).
The World Trade Organization launched a Trade Connectivity Heatmap to provide a broad overview of the trade relationships between various economies across product categories, the WTO announced June 24. The map uses bilateral trade flow data from over 180 economies aggregated into around 70 product types to allow users to zero in on data for bilateral product-by-product relationships. The map allows for the organization of data based on four indicators: imports from a selected economy as a share of other economies' total imports in a chosen product category, exports meant for the selected economy as a share of other economies' total exports, the selected economy's imports originating from other economies as a share of the selected country's imports in the selected product category, and a selected country's exports meant for other economies as a share of the selected country's exports in the chosen product category.
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 granted importer DS Services of America's motion for a preliminary injunction in its case seeking to reinstate a previously granted exclusion from Section 301 China duties for water coolers classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8418.69.0120. The court's order suspends the liquidation of the plaintiff's unliquidated entries while allowing the U.S. to continue to collect Section 301 duties, as the injunction is structured like a statutory injunction routinely entered in antidumping and countervailing duty cases (DS Services of America v. United States, CIT #22-00157).
The Court of International Trade in a June 24 opinion denied plaintiff Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps' move to amend its complaint in an Enforce and Protect Act evasion case to explicitly contest CBP's denial of its protests over the xanthan gum entries subject to the EAPA decision. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the motion was clearly untimely and futile, and found that the delay in filing the amended complaint was undue and that the plaintiff still fails to identify the protests it is contesting.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A remand where the Commerce Department reviews a particular issue is a new agency action and renders moot any arguments that a party did not exhaust its administrative remedies prior to the remand, said plaintiffs in an antidumping duty case, led by Ellwood City Forge Co., in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade on June 17. As such, the plaintiffs' arguments as to the agency's procedural obligations relating to on-site verification made during the remand proceeding were properly exhausted, the brief, recently made public, said (Ellwood City Forge Company v. U.S., CIT Consol. #21-00007).
The U.S., in an amended complaint, continues to fail to show that importer Crown Cork & Seal (CCS) committed fraud or gross negligence over misclassified metal lid imports, the importer argued in a June 22 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. Seeking again to have the trade court toss the U.S.'s first two counts in the case, CCS said the amended complaint doesn't provide any new facts that can revive the two counts which Judge M. Miller Baker already dismissed (U.S. v. Crown Cork & Seal, CIT #21-00361).
The U.K. Court of Appeal in a June 21 judgment dismissed a case from Build-a-Bear Workshop over the classification of accessories for its stuffed bear imports. Build-a-Bear originally filed the case to avoid the 4.7% duty rate for the accessories, which included clothing and wigs, footwear, plastic and textile hearts and animal accessories, and seek duty-free treatment. In March, the Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery sided with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs agency that the accessories should be classified as "other toys" (see 2104010047).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: