The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently upheld U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s classification of imported steel tubing as pipes of iron or non-alloy steel under HTSUS 7306.30.1000 or 7306.30.5028.
The tubing at issue consists of hollow concentric tubes of steel coated on the outside with zinc and on the inside with a compound mainly composed of epoxy resin, melamine resin, and silicone additives. Pieces of the conduit can be connected by threaded steel couplings to form a “raceway” for the routing of electrical wiring in commercial and residential buildings while protecting the wires within from external forces.
The plaintiff argued that the tubing should be classified as electrical conduit tubing lined with insulating material under HTSUS 8547.90.0020. The CAFC noted that the interior coating of the tubing does in fact provide a non-zero amount of resistance to electrical current flow. However, the CAFC ruled that the phrase “lined with insulating material” requires commercially significant insulation of the conduit against current flow from an electricity-conducting wire inside the conduit and that this criterion is not met by the tubing at issue.
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