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).
CBP found substantial evidence that Legion Furniture evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders covering quartz surface products from China, but didn't find substantial evidence that Vanity Art evaded the same orders. CBP, in an Enforce and Protect Act Notice of Determination dated Feb. 9, said that Legion declared the merchandise as Vietnamese-origin wood furniture without declaring the quartz surface product components as subject to the orders on entry.
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.
CBP has detained thousands of Porsche, Bentley and Audi cars in U.S. ports after a supplier to parent company Volkswagen found a "Chinese subcomponent" in the vehicles that violated the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the Financial Times reported on Feb. 14. The delivery will be delayed until as late as the end of March, the paper said.
The Commerce Department said in a new scope ruling Feb. 9 that some of exporter Asia Wheel’s 22.5 to 24.5 inch diameter steel wheels -- those with rims and discs made in Thailand or a third country out of inputs from China -- are not covered by AD/CVD orders on steel wheels from China.
CBP released a new guidance document Feb. 12 on how the agency sets bond amounts, replacing the bond directive it issued in 1991 with a new "Guide for the Public" that the agency has said will accompany a revised internal directive on bonds (see 2309150061).
The Commerce Department has released a correction to the final results of the antidumping duty administrative review on finished carbon steel flanges from India (A-533-871) covering exports of subject merchandise during the period of review Aug. 1, 2021, through July 31, 2022. Commerce said the appendix in the original final results notice, listing companies that were not individually examined, contained the names of five companies that actually were individually reviewed: Bansidhar Chiranjilal; Norma (India) Limited; R. N. Gupta & Company Limited; Uma Shanker Khandelwal & Co.; and USK Exports Private Limited. With the notice, Commerce removed those names from the appendix list.
CBP found substantial evidence that Exquis, Lollicup USA and Sanster evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders covering thermal paper, the agency said. It found that all three importers evaded the orders on thermal paper from China and found that Exquis also evaded the AD order on thermal paper from South Korea, CBP said.
CBP is extending its Global Business Identifier pilot through Feb. 23, 2027, the agency said in a notice released Feb. 9. CBP is also removing commodity and country of origin limitations on the entries eligible for the test, it said, opening the test up to more participants across a wider range of industries.
Starting March 1, non-industrial diamonds of 1 carat or greater, mined in Russia but with another country of origin cannot be entered into the U.S., whether by import or into a foreign-trade zone, unless the Office of Foreign Assets Control licensed that import.