Customs Law

Exactly how to go about getting refunds of incorrectly collected Section 232 duties on steel and aluminum products is a complicated issue. The result, it seems, turns on what caused the incorrect collection. And it is important to act quickly to preserve the right to collect a refund because it turns out that failing to act can result in the loss of the refund. This all comes up in the context of Voestalpine USA Corp and Bilstein Cold Rolled Steel LP v. US . The underlying facts in this case are not terribly complicated. In July of 2018, Bilstein submitted to Commerce a Section 232 exclusion request. The request contained a non-existent 10-digit HTSUS code. Despite the error, and the fact that requests are supposed to be reviewed by CBP for “administrability,” Commerce granted the request with the invalid HTSUS code. VoestAlpine, the importer, entered steel that should have been covered by the exclusion and, noting that the correct HTSUS code on the entry would not match the exclus...

It has been a while, which makes me unhappy. It also means that I have been very busy at work and a lot of what I have been doing is interesting. Some of it will end up getting explained here (eventually). In the meantime, I am squeezing in a few quick updates. The first is about  Logitech, Inc. v. United States  in which the Court of International Trade decided the classification of regular webcams and better webcams used for video conferencing. The legal question comes down to whether they are television cameras of HTSUS Heading 8525 or apparatus for transmitting (or receiving) voice, images or other data for communication in a network (wired or wireless) of 8517. I suspect we instinctively know the answer to this. 8517 is for network-connected communications devices for sending voice, images, and data. Meetings in Teams, Zoom, and other platforms are communications involving voice, images, and other data sent via the internet, which is a network. No matter how devoid of con...