Customs Law

I am not sure how often readers of this blog might use the suggested links on the right margin. I have noticed that a few of the blogs listed there have gone dormant and other URLs have been co-opted by other sites. So, I have done a little curating and removed dead or bad links. I also added a link to the Cultural Heritage Lawyer blog , which I recommend you visit. Cultural heritage law is focused on the restrictions on the trade in antiquities and important artifacts of cultures and ethnic groups. Often, the primary enforcement agencies are Department of Homeland Security Investigations (of ICE for us old timers) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As a result, these issues often become issues of customs law, and something I try to follow. You should too, it is interesting stuff. Also, while I do not tweet often, I remind readers to subscribe to my Twitter feed to catch short updates and links to interesting articles.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the decision of the Court of International Trade in Del Monte Corporation v. United States. For my post on the underlying case, see here. The decision is here . You may recall that the classification issue in this case boiled down to whether tuna meats packed in pouches with sauces containing small amounts of oil are deemed to be "in oil" for purposes of tariff classification. Two prior decisions are at play in this argument. A 1915 case called Strohmeyer & Arpe holds that fish cooked in oil then partially drained and packed in another liquid, which subsequently absored a portion of the cooking oil remaining in the fish, is fish packed in oil. A subsequent case called Richter Bros. found that fish that had been fried in oil, drained, and then packed in in a non-oil liquid, was not "packed in oil" because the oil was not used in the packing process. While these cases appear to be somewhat at odds,

I have been sitting on the latest decision in International Custom Products v. United States for a while now. This stems from a combination of being busy and also some white sauce fatigue. It appears that we are nearing the end of this very long-running dispute. If you need background, start with this post . Also, the background section of this latest opinion from the Court of International Trade does a good job of setting the stage. The entirety of the dispute revolves around U.S. Customs and border Protection's classification of white sauce in 99 entries. CBP suspended the liquidation of most of those entries pending the results of the litigation. However, Customs liquidated 13 entries and denied the resulting protests. As a result of that denied protest, International Custom Products owes the United States $28,000,000 (I'll pause to let that sink in.) The interesting thing about this decision is that it is purely procedural but entirely important. Usually, before an impo