The Justice Department, in a major Section 301 litigation policy reversal, said Aug. 31 it agreed to stipulate that refunds will be available on liquidated customs entries from China with lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure if importers prevail in the massive volume of cases inundating the Court of International Trade to vacate the tariffs. Akin Gump lawyers for sample case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products responded on Aug. 31 that they're "pleased" with the government's stipulation as something the plaintiffs have advocated for months, but not with DOJ's "bewildering" proposal that importers would still be required to file spreadsheet submissions in a CBP repository.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 23-29:
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department should have picked Indonesia over India when selecting a surrogate country in an antidumping duty administrative review on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, Catfish Farmers of America said in an Aug. 30 complaint filed at the Court of International Trade. Commerce picked India in spite of the fact that Indonesia "produces identical and comparable merchandise that more closely represents the subject merchandise than does India, Indonesia produces and exports far greater quantities than India, and the Indonesian data on the record are superior to the Indian data," the complaint said (Catfish Farmers of Ameirca, et al. v. United States, CIT #21-00380).
The Commerce Department's arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that say that pencil importer Prime Time Commerce failed to exhaust its administrative remedies in an antidumping duty review mistake the agency's regulatory requirements, Prime Time said in an Aug. 26 reply brief. Having already requested certain "gap-filling" information that only Commerce could provide five other times in the review, Prime Time did not need to request a sixth time to have argued for a separate rate in the review, the brief said.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade remanded an antidumping case to the Commerce Department after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the trade court's initial ruling in an Aug. 26 order. The Federal Circuit had on July 20 backed Commerce's initial decision to adjust a Turkish pipe exporter's post-sale price by only one-third of a late delivery penalty, finding that the adjustment was supported by substantial evidence (see 2107200038). CIT erred in leading Commerce to adjust the post-sale price by the entirety of the penalty cost since the customer was not aware of the methodology by which the amount of the penalty was to be determined. Commerce has 45 days to file the remand, and any objections can be filed 20 days after the redetermination submission (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., et al. v. United States, CIT Consol. #19-00056).
The Commerce Department stuck with its application of facts available in remand results filed at the Court of International Trade on Aug. 25 despite a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision finding that such reliance on the current data was inappropriate. Seeing as no other data was available than respondent Dillinger France's books and records, Commerce said it had to rely on them despite their deficiencies (Dillinger France S.A. v. United States, CIT #17-00159).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A lawsuit seeking Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusions should be dismissed because the subject entries are not liquidated, the Department of Justice said in an Aug. 26 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. The suit, brought by Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. and Gulf Coast Express Pipeline, is seeking the exclusions on 19 entries of steel pipe from Turkey and claims jurisdiction under Section 1581(a). However, a protestable decision needs to occur to claim this jurisdiction -- something the plaintiffs do not have, DOJ said (Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., et al. v. U.S., CIT #21-00186).