The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative was within its discretion when it declined to reinstate a Section 301 tariff exclusion on water coolers even after the only opposing party withdrew its comments, the DOJ said in an April 28 response to DS Services of America's remand comments at the Court of International Trade (DS Services of America v. United States, CIT # 22-00157).
The Court of International Trade on May 2 upheld a CBP Enforce and Protect Act investigation determination that found CEK Group had evaded an antidumping duty order on steel wire garment hangers from China. Judge Jane Restani noted that the standard for initiation of an EAPA investigation is low and that the "voluminous evidence" provided in M&B’s allegation met both the government’s and CEK’s proposed standards of "reasonable suggestion." It's also "undisputed" that during the investigation CEK and Thai exporter and manufacturer NWH failed to respond to CBP's information requests, justifying the use of adverse inferences, said Restani.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated May 1 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):
Counterweights for mini-excavators are "backhoe" parts and should not be excluded from Section 301 tariffs, DOJ argued in an April 28 brief at the Court of International Trade. The brief bolstered the government's January motion for judgment (see 2301240063) by arguing that the Bobcat mini-excavators that the counterweights are "designed for and exclusively used on" are themselves "backhoes" (Norca Engineered Products v. U.S., CIT # 21-00305)
The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's remand results in an antidumping duty review on activated carbon from China. In an April 28 opinion, Judge Mark Barnett said the court was satisfied with the agency's further explanation of its surrogate value selection for coal-based carbonized materials and its selection of financial statements used to calculate surrogate ratios.
The South Korean government doesn't provide a countervailable subsidy to the South Korean steel industry through the provision of electricity for less than adequate remuneration, the Court of International Trade ruled April 28. Judge Mark Barnett sustained the results of the Commerce Department's 2019 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on carbon and alloy steel cut-to-length plate from South Korea. Barnett said Commerce has considerable leeway to make reasonable methodological choices like it did in the review.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
An enriched ammonium sulfate isotope was incorrectly ruled as being within the scope of antidumping and countervailing duty orders on ammonium sulfate from China, Cambridge Isotope Laboratories argued in an April 28 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Cambridge sued to contest a final scope ruling, issued March 16, which held that NLM-713-10, which consists of an enriched 15N ammonium sulfate isotope, fell within the scope of the orders on ammonium sulfate from China (Cambridge Isotope Laboratories v. U.S., CIT # 23-00080).
A Mexican rebar exporter says its history of marginal dumping rates and cooperation with Commerce Department proceedings means that the 66.7% adverse facts available rate Commerce assigned it in an antidumping duty administrative review could not reasonably reflect any possible dumping, the exporter, Simec, argued in an April 26 motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade (Grupo Simec, et al. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00202).