The Court of International Trade on March 18 said that the U.S. waited too long to send surety firm Aegis Security Insurance Co. a bill for an unpaid customs bond on Chinese garlic imports that entered in 2004. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the government's eight-year delay in demanding the payment from Aegis "was unreasonable and a breach of contract." The court said the delay broke the "reasonable time requirement" -- an "implied contractual term."
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 4-10:
Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.
The Commerce Department is again amending the final results of a countervailing duty administrative review on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China (C-570-980), covering entries during the calendar year 2019 review period. It said its revision to the countervailable subsidy rates assigned to JA Solar Technology Yangzhou Co., Ltd. (JA Solar) and Risen Energy Co., Ltd. (Risen) is due to a recent Court of International Trade judgment that affected the way it calculated the rate.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 26 - March 3:
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Court of International Trade in a decision made public Feb. 29 rejected Chinese printer cartridge exporter Ninestar Corp.'s motion for a preliminary injunction against its designation on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. Judge Gary Katzmann said the company was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims and failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction. He also said the balance of equities and public interest favored the government.
The Court of International Trade on Feb. 27 ruled that Chinese exporter Ninestar Corp. wasn't required to exhaust its administrative remedies by appealing to the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force before challenging its placement on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List "under the particular facts of this case." But Judge Gary Katzmann denied the exporter's motion for a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Entity List, finding that the company was unlikely to succeed on three of its four claims against its listing.
The Commerce Department is amending the final results of an antidumping duty administrative review on multilayered wood flooring (MLWF) from China (A-570-970) based on the final decision in a Court of International Trade case challenging those final results.