UNITED STATES COURT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Slip Op. 25-87

Before the court in American Pacific Plywood, Inc. v. United States, Court No. 20-03914, Slip Op. 25-87 (July 9, 2025), was a challenge to Customs’s redetermination of antidumping and countervailing duties imposed on plaintiff InterGlobal. This case arises from Customs’s initial determination that plaintiffs “evaded antidumping and countervailing duties by falsely describing plywood from China as a product of Cambodia.” Pending appeal of this initial determination, Royal Brush Manufacturing, Inc. v. United States, 75 F.4th 1250 (Fed. Cir. 2023) “held that Customs’s refusal to allow importers accused of evasion to review and address ‘information on which the agency relied in reaching its decision’ violated procedural due process.” Id. at 1262. Following Royal Brush, the Court of International Trade remanded the case to Customs for determinations consistent with Royal Brush’s holding. Customs affirmed its determination, and plaintiff InterGlobal challenged the redetermination preceding the subject Slip Opinion.

In 2019, upon becoming aware of allegations against plaintiffs for evasion of antidumping and countervailing duty orders, Customs launched an investigation on plaintiffs’ conduct pursuant to the Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA), 19 U.S.C. § 1517. After investigating the allegations, Customs determined that the plaintiffs falsely identified entries as products of Cambodia when the entries should have been identified as products of China, thereby allowing the plaintiffs to evade antidumping and countervailing duty orders. Customs’s appellate division affirmed these findings, and plaintiffs brought the case at issue in Slip Op. 25-87. Although Plaintiffs raised several challenges to Customs’s determinations, the Court of International Trade dismissed them either as irrelevant to its present issues, waived by the plaintiffs for failure to raise them earlier, or beyond the court’s “limited role” in the case. The court also invalidated plaintiffs’ requests to admit other “evidence” in support of its position and to follow a less strict standard of liability. Plaintiffs also asserted that they “took reasonable care to confirm that Cambodia, not China, was the country of origin of its plywood.” However, the Court of International Trade struck down this argument as well, reasoning that “[s]uch an entry necessarily stems—at a minimum—from negligence, because it departs from what a ‘reasonably prudent and careful’ importer would do ‘under similar circumstances.’” Citing Negligence, Black’s Law Dictionary 930-31 (5th ed. 1979).

Finding that “Customs followed the relevant procedures, and no part of its redetermination [was] arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” the court sustained Customs’s redetermination of antidumping and countervailing duty orders imposed on the plaintiff. By sustaining Customs’s redetermination, the court affirmed Customs’s broad authority under EAPA and the strict application of certain duties despite the evolution of jurisprudence post Royal Brush.