The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 sustained the Commerce Department's non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings despite the fact that the agency hadn't codified the policy in its regulations at the time the underlying review was challenged. Judges Todd Hughes, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Federal Circuit has a long line of cases upholding the policy and that, even if those cases didn't exist, Commerce didn't need to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement the policy.
The Court of International Trade on July 28 denied importer Detroit Axle's motion for a preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump's decision to end the de minimis threshold on goods from China, which was made under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Judges Gary Katzmann, Timothy Reif and Jane Restani said they already have granted all the relief the importer is seeking, though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed that relief.
Importers Global Plastics and Marco Polo International agreed to pay $6.8 million to settle claims that they violated the False Claims Act by knowingly failing to pay customs duties on plastic resin from China, DOJ announced. The U.S. said Global Plastics and Marco Polo, both subsidiaries of MGI International, received credit for "cooperating with the government."
Importer Grosfillex agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by evading antidumping and countervailing duties on items made with aluminum extrusions from China, DOJ announced. The FCA case was initially filed by Edward Wisner, a former employee of Grosfillex and whistleblower in the case, who will receive a $962,662.74 cut of the settlement.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website July 25, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
CBP created Harmonized System Update 2528 on July 25, containing 10 Automated Broker Interface records and two Harmonized Tariff Schedule records. In support of the PGA Message Set, the USDA APHIS tariff flag AQ1 has been removed from HTS 2827.39.90.10 and 2827.39.90.50.
CBP is seeking public comments on an information collection involving an extension of its Section 321 e-commerce data collection pilot program, it said in a Federal Register notice. Continuing the pilot program would enable CBP to explore different new technologies that could "streamline" the data collection process, the agency said in the notice. The information gleaned from this pilot also could be incorporated into future regulation updates, it said. Comments are due by Sept. 29.
President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters in Scotland July 28, said that he expects the global tariff for small countries to be "in the range of 15 to 20%."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said "all aircraft and component parts, certain chemicals, certain generics, semiconductor equipment, certain agricultural products, natural resources and critical raw materials" from EU countries will be duty-free in the U.S. as part of a trade deal between the two sides.