The Court of International Trade granted a consent motion July 9 to stay proceedings in a case brought by Advantus pending the appeal of decisions made in two cases, ARP Materials, Inc. v. United States and Harrison Steel Castings Co. v. United States. Judge Miller Baker granted the stay until 30 days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issues its mandates in those two cases. ARP and Harrison have not appealed to the Federal Circuit but indicated that they would like to do so (see 2106110053).
Commercial airline operator NetJets Aviation's lawsuit in the Court of International Trade over CBP's assessment of customs user fees on certain of its flights should be partially dismissed since NJA, in part, is claiming the wrong jurisdiction, the Department of Justice said. NJA challenged CBP's denial of its customs protest, filing its case under Section 1581(a) and 1581(i) in CIT, the latter being a challenge to agency action. Submitting a partial motion to dismiss on July 7, DOJ said that NJA's 1581(i) claim should be tossed since 1581(a) exists as the proper avenue of jurisdiction (NetJets Aviation, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00142).
A furniture importer's argument that the Enforce and Protect Act investigation finding it guilty of antidumping duty evasion was unconstitutional is not valid since the importer does not have a protectable interest, the Department of Justice said in a July 9 brief in the Court of International Trade. Since a protectable interest is necessary to claim a due process violation has been committed, Aspects Furniture International's constitutional arguments against the EAPA process fall flat, DOJ said (Aspects Furnitre International, Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-03824).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Global Aluminum Distributor backed Kingtom Aluminio's renewed bid to join a lawsuit over an Enforce and Protect Act investigation that found it helped importers evade antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China, while the original EAPA alleger, Ta Chen International, disputed Kingtom's motion for reconsideration in the case, in briefs filed July 7 (Global Aluminum Distributor LLC v. U.S., CIT #21-00198). Kingtom asks the Court of International Trade to reverse its own June 21 decision that Kingtom can't intervene in the case, brought by the importers found to have evaded AD/CV duties.
The Commerce Department swapped the surrogate labor data it used to calculate normal value in an antidumping investigation after it reconsidered evidence showing signs of forced labor in Malaysia's electrical and electronics [E&E] sector, according to July 8 remand results filed in the Court of International Trade. Finding that this forced labor unfairly skewed the labor costs for consideration as surrogate data, Commerce instead opted to use International Labor Comparisons data for Mexico in 2016 to determine the surrogate labor value (New American Keg v. United States, CIT #20-00008).
Among the recent plethora of lawsuits filed in the Court of International Trade challenging the constitutionality of the Enforce and Protect Act process for investigating evasion of antindumping and countervailing duty orders (see 2106070011), at least one invokes the Eighth Amendment, a rarely litigated part of the U.S. Constitution. Filed by trade lawyer David Craven on behalf of Global Aluminum Distributor, the lawsuit challenges EAPA penalties based on the amendment's prohibition on excessive fines.
Tuesday's U.S. Court of International Trade opinion granting Section 301 plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products a preliminary injunction freezing the liquidation of unliquidated Chinese imports with Lists 3 or 4A tariff exposure (see 2107060080) gave the public its first tangible peek into the court's possible thinking about the merits of the importers' unprecedented legal challenge to the Chinese duties.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department continues to find that the South Korean government did not provide a countervailable subsidy to producers of hot-rolled steel by way of cheap electricity despite a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opinion to the contrary, in July 6 remand results. Filing the second remand results of its kind in a second, separate Court of International Trade case brought by POSCO, Commerce held that POSCO's countervailing duty in an investigation into carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from Korea will remain unchanged (POSCO v. United States, CIT #17-00137).