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 Sept. 5 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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a Sept. 6 opinion said that the Court of International Trade was right to dismiss a suit from two importers seeking to retroactively apply Section 301 tariff exclusions, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction since a protest with CBP was not filed. The trade court held that it did not have jurisdiction under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction, since the court would have had jurisdiction under Section 1581(a) had the importers, ARP Materials and Harrison Steel Castings, filed protests with CBP. The Federal Circuit agreed, holding that the true nature of the suit contests CBP's assessment of the duties and not the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's exclusions, necessitating a protest.
Specialty medical foods designed for infants and toddlers should be classified as medicaments and also enter duty-free under special Chapter 98 tariff provisions for articles for the handicapped, Nutricia North America said in an Aug. 31 motion at the Court of International Trade. Nutricia has asked the court to order CBP to classify the products under Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. subheading 3004.50.5040, with a secondary classification under HTSUS subheading 9817.00.96, to reliquidate the subject entries, and to issue refunds plus interest to Nutricia (Nutricia North America v. U.S., CIT #16-00008).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
CBP properly denied customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae credit for questions 5, 27 and 33 of the April 2018 customs broker license exam, the U.S. argued in an Aug. 31 reply brief filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. DOJ went through each question, detailing why CBP's answer was the correct one and why Chae's preferred answer was errant (Byungmin Chae v. Janet Yellen, Fed. Cir. #22-2017).
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 1 order granted the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's motion to voluntarily reconsider its decision to not reinstate an exclusion to the Section 301 duties on water coolers from China. Plaintiff DS Services of America, doing business as Primo Water North America, didn't oppose the motion. USTR said it wanted to reevaluate its decision given Prime Water's charges of the agency's alleged violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and Natural Choice's request to withdraw its opposition to the reinstatement of the exclusion (DS Services of America v. U.S., CIT #22-00157).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Amazon's Echo Show smart displays are properly classified as "machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data" under subheading 8517.62.00, rather than as speakers of heading 8518, CBP said in a recently released ruling. In HQ H316742, dated June 3 and released Aug. 30, CBP found heading 8517 better described the principal function of the multifunction Alexa devices.
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 26 order stayed the consideration of the merits of plaintiff Environment One's claims in a case seeking to apply retroactive Section 301 exclusions until the court settles the U.S.'s motion to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. DOJ moved to stay consideration of Environment One's claim its merchandise falls within the scope of the claimed exclusion, arguing the stay "would advance the interests of justice" and "could render litigation on the nature of plaintiff's imported merchandise to be unnecessary." Judge Mark Barnett agreed (Environment One v. U.S., CIT #22-00124).