The Court of International Trade in a confidential July 15 order denied customs broker Seko Customs Brokerage's application for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against CBP's temporary suspension of the company from the Entry Type 86 pilot and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program. Judge Claire Kelly said she intends to issue a public version of the opinion "on or shortly after" July 23, giving the litigants until July 22 to review the confidential information in the decision (Seko Customs Brokerage v. U.S., CIT # 24-00097).

Hoverboards are toys, not transportation devices, an importer argued in a motion for judgment filed July 12 in one of a couple of identical classification disputes it has brought in recent years (see 2110150056 and 2112100053) (3BTech v. U.S., CIT # 21-00026).

Loper Bright was cited yet again -- this time in a challenge to a sunset review’s finding that a softwood lumber exporter probably would continue dumping its products in the absence antidumping duties -- as attorneys continue trying to define the new limits of judicial discretion in the post-Chevron era (see 2406280051) (Resolute FP Canada v. U.S., CIT # 23-00095).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 15 issued its mandate in an antidumping duty review on Indian frozen warmwater shrimp after it affirmed the Court of International Trade's decision to sustain the Commerce Department's use of antidumping duty respondent Z.A. Sea Foods' Vietnamese sales to calculate normal value (see 2406070034). The decision was issued without an accompanying opinion. The trade court said petitioner Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee failed to flesh out its claim that, since ZASF's Vietnamese sales were not actually for consumption in Vietnam, Commerce couldn't use them to set normal value (see 2212070036) (Z.A. Sea Foods Private Ltd. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1469).

Countervailing duty petitioner Rebar Trade Action Coalition said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has the authority to reinstate the Commerce Department's original determination attributing subsidies received by an exporter's cross-owed input supplier to the exporter itself (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1431).

In litigation brought by a Vietnamese solar panel exporter, an importer said July 9 that the Commerce Department couldn’t find that all of a country’s exporters had circumvented antidumping and countervailing duty orders based on finding that one mandatory respondent did (Trina Solar (Vietnam) Science & Technology Co. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00228).

Importer Atlas Power is attempting to use a U.S. request to withdraw an admission of fact in a customs case to root out the government's "alternative classification" of the graphics processing units at issue, the U.S. said following Atlas' opposition to the U.S. motion (Atlas Power v. United States, CIT # 23-00084).

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky on July 9 denied a U.S. defense manufacturer's motion to dismiss allegations that it criminally smuggled weapons by selling drawings of a rare earth permanent magnet used in F/A-18 Super Hornets to China (U.S. v. Quadrant Magnetics, LLC, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-CR-88-DJH).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its mandate in a countervailing duty investigation on ripe olives from Spain. In its decision, the appellate court said the Court of International Trade was wrong to impose a 50% threshold in determining whether demand for a processed agricultural product is "substantially dependent" on its raw upstream iteration for purposes of assigning countervailing duties (see 2405200045). Judges Sharon Prost, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said that the Commerce Department shall receive "considerable discretion" in determining whether such demand is substantially dependent due to the general nature of the terms "substantially dependent" (Asociacion de Exportadores e Industriales de Aceitunas de Mesa v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-1162).

The U.S. filed its own supplemental brief July 9 in response to a recent Supreme Court decision, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, arguing that an advocacy group and plaintiff in a forced labor case (see 2402230046) lacks standing to bring its suit to the Court of International Trade (International Rights Advocates v. Alejandro Mayorkas, CIT # 23-00165).