Ben Perkins

The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:

The Commerce Department failed to provide a compelling reason for its doubling of its dumping margin calculation for Cambodian mattress makers on remand, Best Mattress International and Rose Iron Furniture said in their Aug. 30 remand comments. The firms said the decision was unsupported by substantial evidence, as were its decision to use a simple average in surrogate value cost calculations and its reliance on financial statements from Emirates Sleep (Best Mattresses International v. U.S., CIT # 21-00281).

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce Department's final determination in the antidumping duty investigation on raw honey from India. In his Sept. 1 opinion, Judge Mark Barnett found that Commerce adequately explained its decision to use acquisition costs as a proxy for the cost of production of raw honey and that the department was not required to further verify the costs of the beekeepers and intermediary suppliers. Arguments from the American Honey Producers Association and Sioux Honey Association that Commerce could have used alternate data sources or relied on adverse facts were "without merit," said Barnett. Rather than engaging in a "seemingly pointless verification exercise," Commerce lawfully reviewed data to ensure completeness. After filling gaps in the record with plaintiff-provided information, Commerce found the calculated acquisition costs were below those of respondents Allied Natural Products and Ambrosia Natural Products, making further verification unnecessary, he said.

The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:

Door thresholds imported by Worldwide Door Components and Columbia Aluminum Products are both expressly and generally within the scope of antidumping and countervailing orders on aluminum extrusions from China, petitioner Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee said in an Aug. 29 reply at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Worldwide Door Components v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1532) (Columbia Aluminum Products v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1534).

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Aug. 29 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):

The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:

Lionshead Specialty Tire and Wheel, TexTrail and TRAILSTAR evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on imported steel trailer wheels from China, CBP concluded in the results of a recently released Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) investigation. CBP found that the three importers had entered steel wheels using false statements that they didn't contain covered merchandise even though the importers contended that they believed the wheels were out of scope.

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Aug. 24 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):

Plywood imported from Uruguay that is subjected to pressure treatment is ineligible for unused merchandise drawback, CBP headquarters said in an Aug. 21 ruling. The ruling followed a 2021 ruling request by International Forest Products (IFP) as to whether certain activities counted as “manufacturing” or “use” of such products under 19 U.S.C. § 1313(j)(1) and 19 CFR § 190.31(c).