The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Feb. 23 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):
Ben Perkins
Ben Perkins, Assistant Editor, is a reporter with International Trade Today and its sister publications, Trade Law Daily and Export Compliance Daily, where he covers sanctions, court rulings, and other international trade issues. He previously worked as a trade analyst for a Washington D.C. advisory firm. Ben holds a B.A. in English from the University of New Hampshire and an M.A. in International Relations from American University. Ben joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2022.
The Commerce Department stood by its usage of financial statements in an antidumping duty review on mattresses from Vietnam in remand results filed with the Court of International Trade Feb. 23. Following a remand by Judge Timothy Reif, Commerce continued to determine that the financial data it used was complete and publicly available and continued to use that information to derive surrogate financial ratios, leaving the AD rate for plaintiff Ashley Furniture at 144.92% (Ashley Furniture Industries, et al. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00283).
Doris Johnson Hines, an intellectual property lawyer, is about to become the newest administrative law judge at the International Trade Commission, according to a Feb. 23 ITC news release. She will begin work on Feb. 27. She currently is a partner at Finnegan and has "extensive experience in intellectual property litigation in both the public and private sectors leading teams in U.S. district courts, the USITC, and before arbitration panels," the announcement said.
CBP should remand and terminate an Enforce and Protect Act investigation that found CEK Group evaded an antidumping duty order because the underlying allegation was insufficient, not containing information required to find a reasonable suspicion of evasion of an antidumping duty order, CEK argued in a Feb. 15 reply brief at the Court of International Trade (CEK Group LLC v. United States, CIT # 22-00082).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Frozen risottos are classified as pre-cooked foods under Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States heading 1904, even though the risottos are only par-cooked and require more cooking by the consumer, CBP said in a recently released headquarters ruling. Though the importer argued for classification as food preparations of HTS heading 2106, CBP said foods may be considered pre-cooked if they require up to 12 minutes of additional cooking time, and the frozen risottos only require cooking for two to seven minutes more, CBP said in HQ H325964.
The Commerce Department arbitrarily and capriciously applied partial adverse facts available when calculating a final antidumping duty on tapered roller bearings, even though the missing information was irrelevant and could not be obtained from unrelated third parties, manufacturer Tainai said in a Feb. 21 complaint to the Court of International Trade (Shanghai Tainai Bearing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00020).
CBP announced an Enforce and Protect Act investigation on whether LTT International Trading evaded antidumping and countervailing duty orders on quartz surface products from China, according to a recently released notice. CBP determined there was reasonable suspicion of evasion by LTT and imposed interim measures along with formal notice of initiation of the investigation.
A Commerce remand determination on welded carbon steel pipes and tubes should be upheld by the Court of International Trade despite a separate Commerce remand redetermination that dual-stenciled pipe and tube is not covered by an antidumping duty order on circular welded carbon steel pipes and tubes, the government argued in a brief filed Feb. 17 (Saha Thai Steel Pipe Public Company, Limited v. United States, CIT # 21-00627).
The government owes interest on refunded duty overpayments made with a prior disclosure, importer Otter argued in a Feb. 16 motion at the Court of International Trade. Government arguments that repayments of voluntary tenders are not subject to interest accruals means that penalties for prior disclosures could never be enforced if they were made before a penalty was issued, Otter said (Otter Products v. United States, CIT #22-00033).