President Donald Trump may look to ramp up his use of sections 232 and 301 should the Supreme Court rule that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act can't be used for levying tariffs, various lawyers told us. However, the expanded use of these statutes, both as they are being used now and how they may be used to supplant the existing reciprocal and fentanyl trafficking tariffs, may encounter legal difficulties.

DOJ has increasingly relied on an undervaluation theory for trade enforcement cases brought under the False Claims Act in its increased attempt to police trade fraud and may be looking to include "corporate integrity agreements" as part of trade-related FCA settlements, attorneys at Faegre Drinker said during a Nov. 13 webinar that focused on increased trade enforcement.

The Court of International Trade on Nov. 12 held that the deadline for filing a complaint isn't a jurisdictional issue. As a result, Judge Richard Eaton said he had the power to vacate the dismissal of a case from various exporters in an antidumping duty case, which was issued due to the exporters' failure to timely file a complaint.

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The Commerce Department erred in picking Germany as the comparison market for determining antidumping duty respondent Prochamp's normal value in the AD investigation on mushrooms from the Netherlands, petitioner Giorgio Foods told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in its opening brief. Giorgio contested the four bases on which Commerce made its decision to use Germany as the comparison market, arguing that each isn't backed by substantial evidence (Giorgio Foods v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-2090).

The Commerce Department "exceeded its legal authority" in an anti-circumvention case "by imposing a blanket origin finding" on aluminum wire and cable exporter Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable when it barred the company from taking part in the agency's program for certifying that an exporter's inputs weren't of Chinese origin, Tanghenam argued in a Nov. 11 reply brief at the Court of International Trade (Tanghenam Electric Wire & Cable v. United States, CIT # 25-00049).

The Commerce Department unlawfully used "zeroing" in calculating respondent YDD Corporation's antidumping margin in the AD investigation on ferrosilicon from Kazakhstan, YDD argued in a Nov. 7 motion for summary judgment at the Court of International Trade. The respondent said Commerce has a "long-established practice of not using zeroing," yet the agency "departed from this practice" when calculating the company's AD rate "without providing any explanation for this change in practice" (YDD Corporation v. United States, CIT Consol. # 25-00100).

The Commerce Department erred in backing off its use of the Cohen's d test to identify targeted dumping in the middle of an antidumping duty review and introducing a new "two-percent threshold," review respondent Tubos de Acero de Mexico (TAMSA) argued in a Nov. 6 complaint at the Court of International Trade. TAMSA said that while Commerce said it was backing off the d test due to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejecting the agency's use of the test, the agency didn't have to make a change, since CAFC's decision wasn't "final and conclusive" (Tubos de Acero de Mexico v. United States, CIT # 25-00221).

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 may be a more limited "fall-back option" for the Trump administration should the Supreme Court strike down all the tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Dr. Mona Paulsen, law professor at the London School of Economic Law School, wrote in a blog post.

There are probably five justices who will find that the reciprocal tariffs were not permissible under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that the president used to impose them, according to Georgetown University Law Center Professor Marty Lederman. Lederman, a senior fellow in the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown, was one of two guests on the weekly Washington International Trade Association podcast that aired Nov. 7.