The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit conducted oral argument Dec. 6 on an appeal of a tariff classification case that ruled the wrapping, called “net wrap,” that certain farming machines use to package bales of hay were not considered agricultural equipment but rather textiles, carrying a higher duty (RKW Klerks v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 23-1210).

Textile gloves with a plastic coating on the palm and fingers are classifiable in the tariff schedule as gloves, not as articles of plastics, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Dec. 6 opinion.

The Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 4 that a medical food company's imports would be classified as food, not as pharmaceutical products.

Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Chinese exporter Ninestar Corp. moved at the Court of International Trade to unseal and unredact the administrative record in its case against the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force's (FLETF) decision to add the company to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. Ninestar said that while the trade court's recent order mandating disclosure to Ninestar's counsel of the government's evidentiary record marked some progress, the company's counsel said they remain "hobbled" since they can't share these materials with their client (Ninestar Corp. v. United States, CIT # 23-00182).

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judges Alan Lourie, Kara Stoll and Tiffany Cunningham questioned both the position of the government and affected domestic producers in a Dec. 5 oral argument on whether CBP properly denied payouts of interest assessed after liquidation, known as delinquency interest, on antidumping and countervailing duties under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (Adee Honey Farms v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2105) (Hilex Poly Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 22-2106).

The Commerce Department misapplied the four factors used in determining whether companies are de facto controlled by a foreign government in finding exporter Guizhou Tyre was controlled by the Chinese state in the antidumping duty investigation on truck and bus tires from China, the exporter argued. Filing its opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Guizhou Tyre said that Commerce improperly used its government control analysis for firms majority owned by a state-owned enterprise in finding it failed to rebut the presumption of state control, since the exporter is only minority owned by an SOE (Guizhou Tyre Co. v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2165).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Dec. 4 again ruled against Commerce's use of a particular market situation adjustment to the sales-below-cost test in antidumping duty cases.

The Court of International Trade's recent decision that it has subject matter jurisdiction in a challenge to an addition to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List "directly addresses" a jurisdictional issue raised by the trade court in a separate action, importer Southern Cross said in a Dec. 1 notice of supplemental authority. CIT's ruling in Ninestar Corp. v. U.S. shows that the court has jurisdiction to hear the importer's case on the National Marine Fisheries Service's rejection of importer Southern Cross Seafoods' application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, the brief said (Southern Cross Seafoods v. United States, CIT # 22-00299).

The Commerce Department relied on incomplete data when it used a Tier 3 benchmark calculation methodology in the 2020-21 review of the countervailing duty order on phosphate fertilizers from Russia, U.S. importer Archer Daniels Midland Co. argued in a Dec. 1 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Archer Daniels Midland Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00239).