The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 12-18:
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
Exporter Hoshine Silicon (Jia Xing) Industry Co. filed a lawsuit at the Court of International Trade to contest a withhold release order on the company and CBP's rejection of the exporter's petition to be removed from the WRO. The company, which goes by Jiaxing Hoshine, said the WRO has done "significant and irreparable damage" to its business and reputation and that CBP has skirted the law by failing to disclose the evidence it used in issuing the WRO (Hoshine Silicon (Jia Xing) Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00048).
Importer Trijicon's tritium-powered gun sights are "lamps" and not "apparatus," slotting them under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 9405, the Court of International Trade ruled on Feb. 16. Judge Mark Barnett said the gun sights do not meet definition of "apparatus" put forward by either Trijicon or the government, who respectively defined the term as a set of materials or equipment and a complex device. The court instead found that the products "are readily classified as lamps," which are defined as "any of various devices for producing light."
Georgia woman Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois filed suit at the Court of International Trade Feb. 16 to contest six questions on the October 2021 customs broker license exam. In her complaint, Stoute-Francois said that after appealing the test results to the Treasury Department, she was left just short of the 75% grade needed to pass the test, failing at 73.75% (Skeeter-Jo Stoute-Francois v. U.S., CIT # 24-00046).
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 15 said companies that submit requests for administrative review in antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings can intervene as a matter of right at the Court of International Trade.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 5-11:
A Florida husband and wife were each sentenced to 57 months in prison on Feb. 14 for illegally avoiding customs duties and violating the Lacey Act on between $25 million and $65 million worth of plywood products, DOJ announced. Noel and Kelsy Hernandez Quintana also were ordered to pay, "jointly and severally, $42,417,318.50 in forfeitures, as well as $1,630,324.46 in storage costs incurred by the government" after the couple "declined to abandon" the plywood seized by the government, DOJ said.
For Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the future of U.S. trade policy is to make climate a trade policy priority, work with global allies to set digital trade standards and deepen the U.S. trading relationship with the global south.
U.S. priorities during the World Trade Organization's upcoming 13th Ministerial Conference should center on extending the moratorium on e-commerce duties and advancing the second wave of talks on curbing harmful fisheries subsidies, witnesses said at a Feb. 7 hearing of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 29-Feb. 4: