Jacob Kopnick

The Court of International Trade stayed the liquidation of steel and aluminum "derivative" imports potentially subject to the Section 232 national security tariffs, in an Aug. 2 decision. Due in part to a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision, Transpacific Steel LLC et al. v. U.S., CIT permitted the U.S.'s motion for a stay of liquidation for entries that would be assessed the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum derivatives.

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

The U.S. requested the chance to take another look at an Enforce and Protect Act investigation to consider documents that were not sent from one CBP office to another, in a July 30 motion for remand in the Court of International Trade. The agency also sought the remand in light of the court's decision in Royal Brush v. United States, in which CIT held that CBP failed to provide adequate public summaries of business confidential information (BCI) (see 2012020050). The plaintiff in the case, Leco Supply, opposed the remand request, arguing that it is "too broad to be justifiable" under the court's standards for allowing remands (Leco Supply, Inc. v. United States, CIT #21-00136).

The Court of International Trade should grant the Commerce Department's cross-motion for judgment, enforcing the antidumping and countervailing duty rates at which the agency instructed CBP to liquidate crystalline silicon photovoltaic products entries, Commerce said in a July 30 brief. While CBP initially imposed an incorrect AD duty rate for the entries in question, the government defense said it identified the proper rate at which the court should enforce the duties (Aireko Construction LLC v. United States, CIT #20-00128).

Turkish steel exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi's argument that an “extraordinary circumstance” existed, precluding the timely filing of a questionnaire response in antidumping and countervailing duty cases, is not backed by substantial evidence, the Justice Department said in two July 27 reply briefs. By Celik's counsel's own admission, an oversight in the time difference for the filing deadline resulted in the untimely submission, not counsel's emergency medical procedure, DOJ said (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. United States, CIT #21-00045, #21-00050).

In one of his first actions as a CIT judge, Chief Judge Mark Barnett was handed a case reassigned from one of the court’s senior judges at the time, Judge R. Kenton Musgrave. The case, involving a duty drawback claim from BP Oil Supply Company, was filed in July 2004 and had languished in the court for years. Lengthy briefing schedules and a million motions to extend later, it had been nearly a decade since the initial complaint had been filed.

The Court of International Trade should remand the Commerce Department's failure to meet its obligation to verify the information of mandatory respondent Shakti Forge Industries in an antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fittings from India, petitioner Bonney Forge Corporation, along with the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, said in a July 22 reply brief. Commerce's use of facts otherwise available doesn't excuse the agency from its duty to verify and leads to "absurd results," Bonney Forge said (Bonney Forge Corporation et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03837).

A request from a group of four Chinese steel companies to dismiss a case in which the U.S. government alleged the group stole trade secrets was denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on July 26. The group, comprising Pangang Group Company (PGC) and three of its subsidiaries, is accused of stealing DuPont trade secrets for the production of titanium dioxide in violation of the Economic Espionage Act. In their motion to dismiss, the group claimed immunity from criminal prosecution under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), arguing that the group is an "instrumentality" of the Chinese government.

The U.S. is seeking more than $18 million from importer Crown Cork & Seal in a July 28 complaint filed in the Court of International Trade alleging that the company fraudulently misclassified its metal lid imports to skirt a 2.6% duty rate. The goods -- metal lids for food, beverage, household and consumer products -- are properly classified under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 8309.90.0000 and are dutiable at that 2.6% rate, the Department of Justice said. Instead, CCS attempted to classify its metal lid imports from Europe between 2004 and 2009 under HTS subheading 7326.90.1000, which has duty-free treatment (The United States v. Crown Cork & Seal, USA, Inc. et al., CIT #21-361).

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