CBP Sticks With Steel Grating AD/CVD Evasion Finding After Voluntary Remand

CBP filed remand results in an Enforce and Protect Act case at the Court of International Trade Oct. 3, continuing to find products from importers Ikadan System USA and Weihai Gaosai Metal are subject to the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel grating from China. The U.S. had filed a voluntary remand request to add the record of the Commerce Department's scope ruling to the record, but after putting it on the record, CBP stuck to its guns on the evasion finding, declaring that the scope ruling supported its initial decision (Ikadan System USA v. U.S., CIT #21-00592).

In the EAPA case, CBP found Ikadan and Gaosai guilty of evading the AD/CVD orders on steel grating from China by transshipping their grates through South Korea and also misclassifying the entries. Both Ikadan and Gaosai filed scope requests with the Commerce Department on the AD/CVD orders to clear things up, with Ikadan's concerning ductile cast iron flooring for pig farrowing crates and Gaosai's dealing with pig farrowing crates and farrowing flooring systems.

In its scope ruling, Commerce looked at three different products: "(1) a farrowing floor system that is partly made of a galvanized steel tribar truss floor and partly made of a ductile cast-iron floor; (2) a pig farrowing crate with the farrowing floor system described in item (1); and (3) a pig farrowing crate without flooring." Commerce found that the tribar truss floors are subject to the orders "despite their inclusion with other farrowing crate and / or flooring system components." CBP relied on this finding to back its determination the tribar flooring part of the farrowing crates and flooring systems is within the scope of the orders.

In comments on CBP's draft remand, Ikadan and Gaosai said Commerce violated the law by including downstream products -- in this case the farrowing flooring systems -- as covered merchandise since the plain language of the orders fails to mention pig farrowing crates, farrowing flooring systems, tribar truss floors or any further manufactured downstream products that have steel grating as an input. The importers further argued that the "mixed media analysis" Commerce used doesn't apply to the current case since farrowing crates and farrowing flooring systems are "unique items" that meet the trade court-backed criteria to set apart unique products.

CBP found the arguments to be "misplaced." The agency said "the language of the scope of the subject AD/CVD Orders is broad, and CBP correctly made the determination that the tribar floors were described by the scope of the Orders. ... Although we maintain that such input from Commerce was not needed ... the Scope Ruling confirms these findings and has now been added to the administrative record. Therefore, [Office of Trade Regulations and Rulings] declines to address these arguments in its final remand redetermination as the proper avenue to dispute Commerce's Scope Ruling is seeking judicial review under 19 U.S.C. § 1516a(a)(2)."