National Fisheries Institute, Inc. v. U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection

The United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (customs) (defendant) issued a revision to its previous guidelines for setting bond amounts for importers. Pursuant to this revision, customs issued a bond determination increasing the bond amounts for shrimp importers in order to protect against the possibility of shrimp importers failing to pay antidumping duties. In issuing these new bond requirements, customs looked at Chinese crawfish importers and determined that, because these importers were not heavily capitalized, they could easily cease operations without significant ramifications, thus creating a risk that customs would not be able to collect antidumping fees due. The National Fisheries Institute, Inc. (NFI) (plaintiff) filed an as-applied challenge to the bond determination arguing that customs lacked legal authority to consider antidumping dues in setting bond amounts. Specifically, NFI argued that under 19 U.S.C. § 1673g(a), the power to set cash-deposit requirements based on estimated antidumping duties resided with the United States secretary of commerce (commerce) and that customs’ authority was limited to collecting the cash deposits from importers. Customs argued that § 623(a) of the Tariff Act of 1930 granted customs the authority to require such bonds as required for protection of the revenue. NFI also argued that the bond determination for shrimp importers was unnecessarily burdensome or disproportionate to the risk posed to the public revenue. NFI filed a motion for summary judgment on these arguments.