A high-profile legal effort to declare Section 232 tariffs unconstitutional has come to an unsuccessful end, after the Supreme Court on June 22 issued an order declining to hear the case. The high court’s denial of certiorari leaves the American Institute for International Steel, the trade group that filed the lawsuit, with no remaining options to continue its two-year fight against the tariffs, which it had argued were an unconstitutional delegation of congressional tariff powers to the president.
Brian Feito
Brian Feito is Managing Editor of International Trade Today, Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. A licensed customs broker who spent time at the Department of Commerce calculating antidumping and countervailing duties, Brian covers a wide range of subjects including customs and trade-facing product regulation, the courts, antidumping and countervailing duties and Mexico and the European Union. Brian is a graduate of the University of Florida and George Mason University. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2012.
CBP recently issued refunds to an importer of recordkeeping penalties collected by way of a federal law that allows federal and state agencies to withhold tax refunds and other payments to settle debts owed to the government. The checks are part of a settlement to resolve a lawsuit filed by A&K Railroad Materials challenging CBP’s use of offset provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 to collect the penalties. A&K argued the law can’t be used to collect customs debts.
The Commerce Department will consider imposing antidumping and countervailing duties on Vietnamese plywood made from Chinese components that is allegedly circumventing AD/CV duties on hardwood plywood from China (A-570-051/C-570-052), Commerce said in a notice initiating an anti-circumvention inquiry.
Conservation advocacy groups seek a court order compelling the Interior Department to take steps that could lead to a ban on some imports from Mexico. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Welfare Institute filed suit June 11, asking the federal district court in Washington, D.C., to force Interior to respond to a 2014 petition to certify Mexico under the Pelly Amendment for its failure to take action to protect the vaquita porpoise and totoaba fish from illegal poaching.
In an apparent effort to get past a Court of International Trade injunction that bars the agency from ending a safeguard duty exemption for bifacial solar panels, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is pulling back its original attempt to end the exemption. The agency issued notice that it is rescinding its “withdrawal notice” from October 2019 that had reimposed safeguard duties on solar bifacial panels before it was blocked by the court.
A domestic industry association seeks a federal court injunction that could strip certifications from Brazilian plywood and render imports of plywood from Brazil that bear the certification illegal under the Lanham Act. The U.S. Structural Plywood Integrity Coalition says two certification bodies that operate in Brazil are allowing their stamp to be applied to substandard structural plywood, purportedly as evidenced by testing that shows high failure rates in Brazilian structural plywood certified to meet industry standard PS 1-09.
Solar roof mountings made from extruded aluminum parts and steel fasteners do not qualify for the “finished merchandise” exemption from antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China (A-570-967/C-570-968), the Commerce Department said in a recent scope ruling that marks the agency’s first application of a new definition for the exemption born from years of litigation on the subject.
The Court of International Trade on June 2 denied a bid by two nail importers for a preliminary injunction barring the government from collecting Section 232 tariffs on their steel “derivatives” imports. J. Conrad and Metropolitan Staple did not show they would be irreparably harmed if tariff collections proceed, so they didn’t meet at least one of four factors required for the court to issue a preliminary injunction, CIT said.
The Commerce Department is launching a new Section 232 investigation that could lead to tariffs or other restrictions on imports of vanadium, according to a June 2 press release. The agency will determine “whether the present quantities or circumstances of vanadium imports into the United States threaten to impair the national security,” it said.
Women’s trousers imported by Lockhart Textiles that are made from a yarn that includes metal nanopowders are classifiable as trousers of synthetic fibers, rather than of “other textile materials,” the Court of International Trade said in a May 29 decision. Directly addressing the central issue of a series of cases on Best Key yarn that skirted it over five years ago (see 1502030060), CIT found the yarn used to make the trousers is not classifiable as “metalized yarn” of heading 5605.