International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Jan. 5-9 in case they were missed.
Court of International Trade
The United States Court of International Trade is a federal court which has national jurisdiction over civil actions regarding the customs and international trade laws of the United States. The Court was established under Article III of the Constitution by the Customs Courts Act of 1980. The Court consists of nine judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is located in New York City. The Court has jurisdiction throughout the United States and has exclusive jurisdictional authority to decide civil action pertaining to international trade against the United States or entities representing the United States.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 5-11:
President Barack Obama sent the nomination for Jeanne Davidson, a Justice Department lawyer, for a seat on the U.S. Court of International Trade to the Senate on Jan. 7 (here). Obama re-nominated Davidson because the Senate didn't act on her nomination before the 113th Congress came to a close (see 14090823).
The federal government will issue regulations by August 2016 banning imports of fish caught in ways that risk bycatch, under a deal to settle a lawsuit brought by several environmental groups at the Court of International Trade. The Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network, and Natural Resources Defense Council had filed the lawsuit in July (see 14070928), alleging the government failed to put rules in place implementing the Marine Mammal Protection Act's import provisions despite the law’s passage over 40 years ago. Bycatch is the unintentional catch or killing of non-targeted species, including marine mammals, that is unobserved or discarded and not sold or kept for use.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Dec. 29 - Jan. 4:
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 29 sustained a determination by the Commerce Department that refrigerator trim kits imported by Meridian Products are subject to antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China. The court had twice remanded the original scope ruling, and Commerce had in response developed its definition of the “finished goods kits” exemption to AD/CV duties to address the exemption’s application to kits that may not have all necessary parts to assemble a finished product, but that are designed to display or work with interchangeable or customizable components (see 14032701). The dispute now centered on whether Meridian's trim kits "display" or "work with" refrigerators, but CIT found that Meridian failed to adequately raise certain points in legal briefs, and anticlimactically ruled in favor of Commerce after deciding it couldn’t consider Meridian’s arguments.
The Court of International Trade on Dec. 24 sided with an importer in a dispute over the tariff classification of a combination play mat and shopping cart seat cover (here). Although the Funny Farmer, imported by Infantino, had the characteristics of both products, the properties of a toy gives the article its essential character, said the court.
The Court of International Trade shot down an injunction request from Otter Products that would have prevented CBP from stopping imports of some of the company's iPhone cases. The CIT found that Otter's injunction request failed to demonstrate "irreparable harm" that would result without the injunction, it said in the Dec. 23 decision (here). Otter sought the injunction as part of an ongoing battle against an International Trade Commission general exclusion order (GEO) that CBP found to include Otter's "Symmetry" iPhone cases. The court also found that it can't hear Otter's challenge to CBP's decision to exclude future cases because of a lack of detail as to how an import ban would hurt the company.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Dec. 22-28:
Goods cannot be found to have undergone a “minor alteration” to circumvent antidumping or countervailing duties if the Commerce Department knew an article existed commercially when writing an AD/CVD order, yet excluded it from the order anyway, said the Court of International Trade on Dec. 22 as it sustained a remand redetermination on steel wire rod from Mexico that was filed by Commerce under protest (here). CIT had in 2013 told Commerce to reconsider its finding that Deacero’s 4.75mm wire rod is circumventing the AD duty order, even though the scope of the order specifies that only wire rod between 5 mm and 19 mm in diameter is subject to duties. CIT pointed to evidence that the 4.75 mm wire was commercially available when Commerce issued the order in 2002. It would have been different if the scope was ambiguous as to whether 4.75mm wire was covered, but the agency’s decision to specifically limit the minimum diameter to 5 mm in the order even though it knew smaller wire existed means Commerce can’t go back later and effectively change the scope of duties by finding the 4.75 mm wire is also covered, said CIT.