Pieces of Fabric Don't Have Essential Characteristics of Airplane Brake Parts, US Argues

An airplane parts importer's products are just pieces of fabric, not airplane parts, the U.S. said Oct. 4 in support of its own cross-motion for summary judgment in a classification case (Honeywell International Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 17-00256).

Importer Honeywell brought the 2017 case to the Court of International Trade, arguing CBP wrongly classified its goods in the “fabrics” section of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule -- specifically under heading 6307 for “other made up articles, including dress patterns” (see 2409090038). It claims they should instead have been classified as airplane parts, or parts of parts, under 8803, saying the fabric pieces are pre-cut and can’t be used for anything else.

But the products at issue -- precut radial, chordial and web pieces of fabric that are turned into airplane brake discs via processing -- don’t have the essential characteristics of brake discs, the U.S. said in a June cross-motion for summary judgment (see 2406130062) and again in its Oct. 4 reply.

Before the fabric pieces can be used as airplane brake discs, they must be attached to each other in various iterations by being inserted into a “needling” machine, it said. They then undergo a carbonization and densification process that can take up to six months, it said. At the end of the process, it argued, the products have the actual characteristics of aircraft brake discs: “high strength, added thermal characteristics, ability to absorb and transfer heat, and generate friction.”

As a result, the imported fabric pieces cannot be “unfinished parts,” as under General Rule of Interpretation 2(a) an incomplete or unfinished part “has the essential character of the complete or finished article,” it said.

“Our argument on this point remains undisputed by Honeywell,” it said.

And Honeywell itself describes the fabric segments as “raw material” in its contracts with a manufacturer, the government noted.

The importer also claims that the fabric segments are materials that are integral to brake discs, but that’s not what the term “integral” means in the case law, it said. Rather, it said, cases that look into “integral” parts “consider a finished part,” not an unprocessed one like the fabric pieces, “and how that part works when fitted or used with another finished article.”

But, in this case, “there is nothing existing for the segments to become a part of -- because it is the segments, acting as a raw material, that are processed and transformed into a new article with a different molecular make up than that of the segments,” it said.

And the U.S. disagreed that the pieces of fabric were only usable to make aircraft brake discs. In Honeywell’s interrogatory responses, it said, the importer provided a chart that showed six different fabric pieces could also be used to make automobile brake discs.