The Court of International Trade ordered DOJ to produce documents in response to two discovery requests by Zhe "John" Liu, a defendant in a penalty case (U.S. v. Zhe "John" Liu, CIT # 22-00215).
Ben Perkins
Ben Perkins, Assistant Editor, is a reporter with International Trade Today and its sister publications, Trade Law Daily and Export Compliance Daily, where he covers sanctions, court rulings, and other international trade issues. He previously worked as a trade analyst for a Washington D.C. advisory firm. Ben holds a B.A. in English from the University of New Hampshire and an M.A. in International Relations from American University. Ben joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2022.
The International Trade Commission correctly used critical circumstances in its investigation of raw honey from Vietnam, the ITC said in its March 10 response brief at the Court of International Trade. The commission asked the court to affirm its determination and to deny a December motion for judgment by the four plaintiffs, Honey Solutions, Sunland Trading, Export Packers Co. and Sweet Harvest Foods (Sweet Harvest Foods, et al. v. United States, CIT # 22-00188).
The Court of International Trade should affirm the Commerce Department's remand results in order to allow a countervailing duty petitioner to potentially appeal aspects of those results to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, petitioner Daikin America said in its March 9 remand comments to the Court of International Trade (Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 22-00120).
Chemical Products Corp. has dropped a suit challenging the Commerce Department's final negative determination of dumping in the antidumping duty investigation on barium chloride from India at the Court of International Trade (Chemical Products Corp. v. United States, CIT, # 23-00021). The case was brought in February and saw little action until CPC requested dismissal March 9. CPC did not respond to requests for comment. DOJ declined to comment on the dismissal.
The Commerce Department's subsidy calculation errors in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China resulted in an inaccurate CVD rate for Fine Furniture and other Chinese wood flooring exporters, Fine Furniture argued in a March 9 motion for judgment af the Court of International Trade (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00210).
A Court of International Trade case concerning the classification of human interface controllers should be suspended under a test case, German multinational technology company Robert Bosch argued in a March 8 motion. The request followed a March 1 test case designation by CIT Judge Timothy Stanceu. Both cases involve the same classification issue and the same material facts, Bosch argued. Separate litigation of each case would raise the possibility of separate judgments, which could yield "very problematic" results, Bosch said (Robert Bosch v. U.S., CIT # 20-00028, # 20-00030).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated March 9 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Commerce Department correctly applied adverse facts available to Brazilian honey producer Supermel during an antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from Brazil, defendant-intervenors the American Honey Producers Association and the Sioux Honey Association argued in a March 3 response brief at the Court of International Trade. Supermel's December motion for judgment should be tossed because the exporter failed to cooperate in the investigation and was correctly hit with AFA, the intervenors argued (Apiario Diamente Comercial Exportadora v. United States, CIT # 22-00185).
A Court of International Trade ruling that allowed the Commerce Department to use the Cohen's d test as part of its differential pricing analysis to root out masked dumping (see 2302270049) should be given weight in a separate case contesting Commerce's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on thermal paper from Germany, DOJ said in a March 7 filing at the Court of International Trade. Matra Americas and intervenor Koehler Paper argued in their September motion for judgment that Commerce’s use of the d test was flawed because it fails to take into account assumptions of sample size, distribution, and variance (see 2209160055) (Matra Americas v. United States, CIT # 21-00632).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York: