Jacob Kopnick

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

A seafood importer, Kendell Seafood Imports, can't skirt a more than $2.5 million bill for shipments of Chilean sea bass it ordered from fishing company Chilean Sea Bass Inc., the latter company said in an Aug. 16 complaint at the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Since Kendell entered into a contract in good faith for over $5 million in sea bass for 2019-2020 and has only paid a fraction of that total price tag, the importer must pay the remainder of the bill, CSB said (Chilean Sea Bass Inc. v. Kendell Seafood Imports, Inc., D.R.I. #21-00337).

A Commerce Department regulation establishing expedited reviews for countervailing duty investigations was vacated in an Aug. 18 opinion from the Court of International Trade. Chief Judge Mark Barnett penned his fourth opinion in the case, upholding Commerce's finding that it couldn't find any alternative statutory basis on which to find that the regulation can exist.

OtterBox's victory in a Court of International Trade case setting a lower duty rate in a customs challenge on smartphone covers cannot be extended to a prior disclosure made by OtterBox, CIT said in an Aug. 18 opinion. Judge Claire Kelly ruled that the court did not have the jurisdiction to make the determination that entries not part of the Summons of the case should be reliquidated.

The Court of International Trade consolidated six challenges to the Commerce Department's denials of Section 232 steel and aluminum exclusion requests in an Aug. 17 order. Judge M. Miller Baker said the cases brought by North American Interpipe, Evraz Inc., Allegheny Technologies Incorporated, AM/NS Calvert, California Steel Industries and Valbruna Slater Stainless will be jointly considered for the "limited purpose of resolving the motions to remand."

The Court of International Trade created an “impermissible distinction” under customs valuation law between goods from non-market and market economies when it denied importer Meyer Corp. first sale valuation, the importer argued in an Aug. 9 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Kicking off litigation in the much-anticipated appeal proceedings, Meyer argued against the alleged impermissibility of CIT's first sale rejection and for its qualifications for the special valuation status (Meyer Corporation, U.S. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #21-1932).

The Commerce Department will reconsider its application of the major input rule, treatment of certain general and administrative expenses and its use of adverse facts available in an antidumping duty case, according to two Aug. 18 Court of International Trade opinions. After remanding the case once before, Judge Leo Gordon remanded certain elements of the results yet again, but did sustain certain parts of Commerce's reconsideration, including its differential pricing analysis and adjustment of interest expenses to include a portion of the respondent's parent holding company's interest expense.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The U.S.' voluntary remand request in two Section 232 exclusion cases should be denied in its current form since the government's delayed, tranched solution is "unconscionable," steel importers Allegheny Technologies Inc. and California Steel Industries argued in an Aug. 16 reply brief. Given that Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion requests are supposed to be decided within 106 days, the Commerce Department's proposed nine to 12 month schedule to reconsider CSI's exclusion requests is "unreasonable" with a "nonsensical" rationale, CSI argued (Allegheny Technologies Incorporated et al. v. U.S., CIT #20-03923)(California Steel Industries, Inc. v. U.S., CIT #21-00015).

The Commerce Department's remand results following an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over an antidumping duty administrative review should be remanded yet again, mandatory respondent Bosun Tools Co. said in comments at the Court of International Trade. Commerce should have applied neutral facts available instead of adverse facts available when weighing Bosun's country of origin information using a first-in-first-out (FIFO) methodology, Bosun said. Even if this use of AFA is sustained, it should be limited to missing information and not applied to the U.S. sales prices for reported-FIFO sales, as Commerce did, Bosun suggested (Diamond Sawblades Manufacturers' Coalition v. United States, CIT #17-00167).