The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 22-28:
First sale treatment may not be applicable to transactions involving non-market economies, including China, Court of International Trade Senior Judge Thomas Aquilino said in a March 1 decision. In a ruling on cookware imported by Meyer from Thailand and China through a Chinese middleman, the trade court found the involvement of Chinese companies made it difficult to determine whether the transaction was at arm's length and undistorted by non-market influences, as required for first sale valuation. Though he stopped short of saying imports originating in non-market economies could never receive first sale valuation, he called on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to clarify.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 15-21:
Some major publishing houses, along with several other smaller publishers, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade challenging the legality of List 4A of the Section 301 tariffs on China goods. In a Feb. 17 filing, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, with others, said the 10% tariff extension to more than $120 billion in List 4A goods violated the Administrative Procedure Act -- a legal theory used by more than 3,500 other companies in similar cases against the tariffs. Also party to the suit are Bloomsbury Publishing, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Holtzbrinck Publishers, Storey Publishing, Teacher Created Materials, The Experiment, Timber Press and Workman Publishing.
The U.S. Court of International Trade plans to “proceed first” on choosing a “representative sample” of test cases to manage the roughly 3,500 Section 301 complaints inundating the court, said an order (in Pacer) signed Tuesday by the three-judge panel of Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves. All the suits seek to get the Lists 3 and 4A Chinese tariffs vacated and the duties refunded with interest. “The court expects that the number of sample cases identified will be small enough to permit the efficient disposition of this litigation while allowing the court to consider all claims raised by the various Plaintiffs,” said the order. “The court anticipates issuing a stay of all Section 301 cases assigned to the panel that are not selected to proceed as sample cases.” It set a March 19 deadline for plaintiff attorneys to submit a “coordinated proposal” on the test cases and to suggest lawyers to sit on a steering committee. Lawyers who think their complaint “would not be represented by a sample case proposal” or feel they belong on the steering committee have until March 26 to appeal, it said. Most court observers think the first-filed HMTX Industries/Jasco Products litigation is a shoo-in for one of the test cases. Virtually all the complaints argue the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative overstepped its Section 301 authority under the 1974 Trade Act by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the Chinese and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running tariff rulemakings that lacked transparency. A few complaints make the additional argument that USTR acted unconstitutionally by taxing importers.
The U.S. Court of International Trade plans to “proceed first” on choosing a “representative sample” of test cases to manage the roughly 3,500 Section 301 complaints inundating the court, said an order (in Pacer) signed Tuesday by the three-judge panel of Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves. All the suits seek to get the Lists 3 and 4A Chinese tariffs vacated and the duties refunded with interest. “The court expects that the number of sample cases identified will be small enough to permit the efficient disposition of this litigation while allowing the court to consider all claims raised by the various Plaintiffs,” said the order. “The court anticipates issuing a stay of all Section 301 cases assigned to the panel that are not selected to proceed as sample cases.” It set a March 19 deadline for plaintiff attorneys to submit a “coordinated proposal” on the test cases and to suggest lawyers to sit on a steering committee. Lawyers who think their complaint “would not be represented by a sample case proposal” or feel they belong on the steering committee have until March 26 to appeal, it said. Most court observers think the first-filed HMTX Industries/Jasco Products litigation is a shoo-in for one of the test cases. Virtually all the complaints argue the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative overstepped its Section 301 authority under the 1974 Trade Act by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the Chinese and that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running tariff rulemakings that lacked transparency. A few complaints make the additional argument that USTR acted unconstitutionally by taxing importers.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb.8-14:
The U.S. Court of International Trade plans to “proceed first” on choosing a “representative sample” of test cases to manage the roughly 3,500 Section 301 complaints inundating the court, said an order signed Feb. 16 by the three-judge panel of Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves. All the suits seek to get the List 3 and List 4A Chinese tariffs vacated and the duties refunded with interest. “The court expects that the number of sample cases identified will be small enough to permit the efficient disposition of this litigation while allowing the court to consider all claims raised by the various Plaintiffs,” the order said. “The court anticipates issuing a stay of all Section 301 cases assigned to the panel that are not selected to proceed as sample cases.”
The U.S. Court of International Trade gave DOJ a March 12 deadline for filing a “master answer” of its defenses “in law or fact” to the roughly 3,500 complaints filed since September to get the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods vacated and the duties refunded, said a procedural order (in Pacer) signed Wednesday by the three-judge panel assigned Friday to handle the massive litigation (see 2102050038). DOJ’s answer on behalf of all the defendants shouldn't attempt to “cross-reference” specific paragraphs in the various complaints, but “in a ‘generic’ manner admit or deny (including denials based on lack of information and belief) the allegations typically included in claims made against them as well as make such additional allegations as are appropriate to their defenses,” said the order. It would be DOJ’s first opportunity to defend the allegations in virtually all the complaints that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Trump administration overstepped its Section 301 authority when it imposed the retaliatory Lists 3 and 4A tariffs against the Chinese and violated the Administrative Procedure Act by conducting tariff rulemakings that lacked transparency. Judges Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves devised a “master case” procedure “to reduce the time and expense of duplicate filings of documents,” said the order. When DOJ files its answer in the new master case docket 21-cv00052-3JP, the document “will constitute an answer” in each Section 301 case already filed and yet to be filed in the future, except when DOJ later files “a separate answer in an individual case,” it said. Lawyers in the early going of the Section 301 litigation complained DOJ broke court rules when it filed procedural papers only in the docket of the first-filed HMTX Industries/Jasco Products case, and not in each of the dockets of the thousands of cases that followed. When pleadings, motions and other relevant documents are docketed in the master case, it will be as if they have been docketed in all the individual cases, said the order. Documents germane only to a specific case would still be filed in the individual case's docket, it said.
CBP's planned addition of partner government agency data functionality for foreign-trade zones (see 1702150037) has moved to the “back burner,” due to automation funding questions, said Jim Swanson, director of the Cargo and Security Controls Division, for Cargo and Conveyance Security, CBP Office of Field Operations. CBP has “reduced funds for programming this year and as a result we are working with retained funds and other funding, but we have our ongoing maintenance needs to continue to work, plus continuing changes that have to be programmed, and that comes out of the base budget for automation,” he said. “So we are not looking at taking on a lot of new causes this year unless they come with a funding package associated with it.” Swanson spoke Feb. 10 during a National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones virtual conference.