The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 23-29:
Section 232 Tariffs
The United States currently maintains a 25% tariff on steel imports and 10% on tariff on aluminum imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. In 2018, the Trump administration imposed Section 232 Tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the United States, citing national security concerns. The U.S. agreed to lift tariffs on Canada and Mexico after the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and reached deals with the European Union, Japan and other countries to replace the tariffs with quotas for steel and aluminum imports into the U.S.
The Court of International Trade on Aug. 26 dismissed a steel importer's and purchaser's bid to reliquidate two entries subject to Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, saying the plaintiffs had already received the relief available to them from the Commerce Department in the form of a product exclusion but failed to preserve their ability to receive a refund by way of an extension of liquidation or a protest.
The Aluminum Association's Section 232 working group recently met with Commerce Department and Office of U.S. Trade Representative staff “with a recommendation on how to navigate the ongoing aluminum tariff dispute between the U.S. and European Union,” it said in its weekly newsletter. The U.S. and the EU said in June they hoped to reach an agreement on Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum by year-end (see 2106150070). “Rather than a hard tariff rate quota (TRQ) to replace the 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports from the EU, the Aluminum Association is proposing that the tariff be gradually reduced until it reaches parity on a U.S./EU Most Favored Nation basis,” it said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representatively should allow for goods that were subject to Section 301 tariffs at the time of entry to a foreign-trade zone to be tariffed at whatever rate is in effect when the goods are removed from the FTZ, the National Associations of Foreign-Trade Zones said in a recent letter to the USTR. The trade group offered support for the suspension on Section 301 duties that were related to digital services taxes, and said that "the notices confirm the application of Sec. 301 duty rates in effect at the time of Customs entry for subject merchandise admitted into a U.S. foreign-trade zone (FTZ) in mandated privileged-foreign (PF) status."
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 2-8:
CBP's plans to extend the Part 102 marking rules from NAFTA to USMCA determinations of country of origin for nonpreferential claims and procurement under USMCA (see 2107010045) lacks the legal justifications needed to finalize the proposal, Novolex Holdings, a packaging conglomerate owned by the Carlyle Group, said in comments to the agency. "As proposed, such origin determinations would no longer abide by the precedent developed in over a century of determinations by the federal courts," the company said. The comments were posted Aug. 11 in the docket.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 26 - Aug. 1:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 19-25:
The president may impose greater Section 232 national security tariffs beyond the 105-day timeframe for action set out in the statute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a July 13 ruling. Overturning a lower court ruling, the Federal Circuit found that the underlying law's deadline for the president to take "action" can refer to a "plan of action" carried out over a period of time following the 105-day deadline. That authority is not unlimited, though, in that modifications must be related to the underlying reasoning for the tariffs and those reasons can't be "stale," CAFC said.
The European Union and the U.S. working together have the leverage to change China's distortions in the world economy, experts speaking during a three-day series on EU-U.S. trade issues said. But it's not easy, with the economic interests of German manufacturers in China, the history of trade tensions across the Atlantic, and bureaucratic torpor on both sides, they said.