Perforating Gun Tubing Importer Confused Exclusion Requests With Scope Rulings, US Says

An importer of tubing for perforating guns filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings despite the fact that issues of fact still remain unresolved, the U.S. said in a response brief Sept. 24 (G&H Diversified Manufacturing v. U.S., CIT # 22-00130).

Importer G&H Diversified Manufacturing filed its motion in June arguing that the Commerce Department had wrongly accepted the importer’s request for exclusion from Section 232 tariffs for its products, then let CBP deny it the exclusion upon entry when the agency classified its shipment under a different Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading (see 2406240064).

But, first, exclusion requests are not the same as customs rulings, the U.S. responded in its Sept. 24 filing.

Approved exclusion requests apply to “merchandise described in the exclusion request and classified in the 10-digit provision of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) claimed in the exclusion request,” it said, citing Commerce’s exclusion request decision memo. These approved requests were not determinations that an importer’s products were actually classifiable under the heading the importer claimed, it said.

As a result, that means G&H has not proven as a matter of law that its entry is even classifiable under the importer’s preferred, and excluded, tariff schedule heading, the government said.

Lacking the results of discovery and any sort of judicial record, the court has no way of determining which heading the products in question should actually be classified under, it said.

It asked the court for “the opportunity to explore, through interrogatories and document requests, as well as through depositions, the characteristics of the merchandise.” And it noted that the “fact that G&H served document requests and interrogatories on the Government after filing its motion for the judgment on the pleadings shows that it, too, believes that facts remain to be determined.”