Importer Shamrock Building Materials laid out a "myriad of unsupported and unpersuasive arguments" against the Court of International Trade's finding that electrical conduit is properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 7306, the U.S. argued in a Sept. 22 reply brief. The government said the heading, which provides for "other tubes, pipes and hollow profiles" of iron or steel, exactly describes the electrical conduit, and that heading 8547, which covers "electric conduit tubing lined with insulating material," does not fit the bill (Shamrock Building Materials v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1648).
Low-carbon steel blanks imported from China are covered by the scope of an antidumping duty order on tapered roller bearings and parts thereof from China, the Commerce Department said in a Sept. 19 scope ruling.
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 21 ruled in a customs classification case involving eight different categories of decorative plant parts, siding with importer Second Nature Designs on its preferred classification of two of the categories and with the government on one of the categories. Pertaining to three other categories, Judge Gary Katzmann said that there were fact questions remaining, leading the judge to deny summary judgment and advance litigation to its "second phase."
In the Sept. 13 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 57, No. 33), CBP published a proposal to revoke ruling letters concerning processed brewer's saved grains and a wooden box from China.
The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 21 opinion granted parts and denied parts of importer Second Nature Designs' motion for judgment in a customs case on decorative items of plant parts. Judge Gary Katzmann said he agreed with Second Nature that "certain categories" of the imports should be classified as "dried items and curled items" under subheading 0604.90.30, free of duty. But for other categories, the court sided with the government's classification as "artificial flowers or fruit" under 0604.90.60, dutiable at 7%. Factual issues plague the remaining categories, the judge said, denying motion for summary judgment on those goods.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The classification of gun sight inserts that use tritium for powerless illumination in low light conditions are properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 9022 under the first General Rule of Interpretation (GRI), importer Trijicon argued in a Sept. 15 motion for summary judgment at the Court of International Trade (Trijicon v. United States, CIT # 22-00040).
The Commerce Department made multiple errors, including miscalculating benchmark data and the use of adverse inferences, in a countervailing duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China, Baroque Timber Industries said in its Sept. 15 reply at the Court of International Trade. Those alleged errors resulted in inaccurate CVD rates for Fine Furniture and other Chinese wood flooring exporters, Baroque said in a motion for judgment in March (see 2303100041) (Baroque Timber Industries (Zhongshan) Co. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00210).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Sept. 14 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):