The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 6 opinion rejected a U.S. motion to dismiss cases from three importers challenging the Commerce Department's denial of their Section 233 steel tariff exclusion requests. The government said the cases should be tossed since they concern entries that already had been finally liquidated, but Judge M. Miller Baker held that it's possible for the court to order liquidation in Administrative Procedure Act cases brought under Section 1581(i), even if liquidation is final.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
A CBP Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) investigation found that Superior Commercial Solutions engaged in evasion by undervaluation and/or transshipment through Vietnam when it imported quartz surface products covered by antidumping and countervailing duty orders.
A lawsuit from U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman against her colleagues' investigation into her fitness to continue serving on the bench should be dismissed, CAFC Judges Kimberly Moore, Sharon Prost and Richard Taranto argued in a Sept. 1 motion to dismiss. The judges -- who comprise the three-judge panel carrying out the investigation on the 96-year-old Newman -- said that Newman's suit "suffers from fatal jurisdictional flaws" (The Hon. Pauline Newman v. The Hon. Kimberly A. Moore, D.D.C. # 23-01334).
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 6 opinion granted the U.S. request for a voluntary remand to reconsider the Commerce Department's decision to reject Section 232 steel and aluminum duty exclusions for three companies, AM/NS Calvert, California Steel Industries and Valbruna Slater Stainless. Judge M. Miller Baker said that if on the remand, the government grants the exclusions, Commerce must tell CBP to "honor the exclusions" on entries that have not finally liquidated "when those requests were originally denied." The judge also rejected the U.S. motion to dismiss the case as to the finally liquidated entries, finding that the Administrative Procedure Act allows for reliquidation of finally liquidated entries since no other statute expressly forbids this relief.
Byungmin Chae, a Nebraska man who took the customs broker license exam, petitioned the Supreme Court of the U.S. to hear his appeal of his test results. Chae appealed his test results to CBP, the Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, receiving credit for some of the question answers he challenged, but ultimately falling just one correct answer shy of a passing grade on the April 2018 exam (Byungmin Chae v. Janet Yellen, U.S. Sup. Ct. # 23-200).
A complaint by Turkish exporter Eregli Demir ve Celik Fabrikalari (Erdemir) that challenged the International Trade Commission's decision not to institute a changed circumstances review of the antidumping duty order on hot-rolled steel flat products from Turkey should be dismissed because Erdemir's claim was rendered moot when the ITC conducted a full sunset review, the ITC said in an Aug. 31 brief at the Court of International Trade (Ereğli Demir ve Çelik Fabrikalari v. U.S. International Trade Commission, CIT # 22-00350).
The Commerce Department failed to provide a compelling reason for its doubling of its dumping margin calculation for Cambodian mattress makers on remand, Best Mattress International and Rose Iron Furniture said in their Aug. 30 remand comments. The firms said the decision was unsupported by substantial evidence, as were its decision to use a simple average in surrogate value cost calculations and its reliance on financial statements from Emirates Sleep (Best Mattresses International v. U.S., CIT # 21-00281).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Organization of Professional Aviculturists and the Lineolated Parakeet Society told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that the Fish and Wildlife Service illegally rejected their petitions to add two avian species to the list of birds that can be imported to the U.S. The avian advocacy groups argued that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida erroneously dismissed their case by ruling that the plain language of the Wild Exotic Bird Conservation Act does not require species to be listed by the specific countries of origin from which they can be imported (Organization of Professional Aviculturists v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11th Cir. # 23-11984).