The Court of International Trade on Aug. 29 sustained the Commerce Department's decision on remand not to continue applying adverse facts available to a mandatory respondent in the 2018 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on multilayered wood flooring from China (see 2508280047) (Evolutions Flooring v. United States, CIT Consol. #21-00591).
The Court of International Trade held that Section 1318(a) of the Trade Act of 1930, which lets the president grant duty-free treatment to certain goods "for use in emergency relief work," doesn't cover solar cells and modules. As a result, Judge Timothy Reif vacated the Commerce Department's duty "pause" on collection of antidumping duties and countervailing duties on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam that were set to be collected from the four countries due to an anti-circumvention proceeding.
A New York man was sentenced Aug. 27 to six months in prison for "smuggling Egyptian antiquities" into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced. The defendant, Ashraf Omar Eldarir, pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of smuggling goods through John F. Kennedy International Airport.
CBP unlawfully applied 10% Section 301 duties to importer Shaw Industries Group's Chinese flooring entries, since the goods were subject to an exclusion from the tariffs, Shaw argued in an Aug. 29 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Shaw Industries Group v. United States, CIT # 21-00400).
The Commerce Department permissibly decided not to countervail India's Advanced Authorization Scheme, which is akin to an advance drawback system, in the 2021 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on new pneumatic off-the-road tires, the Court of International Trade held in a decision made public Aug. 29.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Aug. 29 said President Donald Trump exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by imposing the reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico to combat the flow of fentanyl. Declining to address whether IEEPA categorically provides for tariffs, though spilling much ink on the topic, a majority of the court held that IEEPA doesn't confer unbounded tariff authority (V.O.S. Selections v. Donald J. Trump, Fed. Cir. #s 25-1812, -1813).
Fariha Kabir, a former international trade litigation attorney at CBP, has left the agency to join Faegre Drinker as an associate, she announced on LinkedIn. Kabir had worked at CBP since 2021, helping with the litigation of customs matters before the Court of International Trade and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, including cases on tariff classification and value, the exclusion or detention of import entries, and CBP regulations.
The Commerce Department failed to select more than one respondent in both the antidumping duty and countervailing duty investigations on solar cells from Thailand, the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee argued last week in a pair of complaints. The alliance, which served as the petitioner for both investigations, said that Commerce failed to abide by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit precedent by not selecting more than one respondent where multiple companies are subject to the investigations (American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee v. United States, CIT #s 25-00165, -00167).
The Commerce Department improperly used the financial statements of Indonesian producer PT Suparma to set the surrogate financial ratios in the antidumping duty investigation on paper plates from Vietnam, since Suparma doesn't make merchandise comparable to respondent Go-Pak Paper Products Vietnam, the respondent argued. Filing a motion for judgment at the Court of International Trade on Aug. 28, Go-Pak said Commerce also erred in using a simple average of the average unit values for two different Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings to value its paper input, since its input only falls under one of the subheadings (Go-Pak Paper Products Vietnam Co. v. United States, CIT # 25-00070).
While many attorneys believe that one of the cases on the legality of President Donald Trump's tariffs is on a collision course with the Supreme Court, questions remain about exactly when the high court will review the case and in what form. One possibility would see the lead appeal, V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, which currently sits before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, head to the Supreme Court's emergency, or "shadow," docket.