The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Oct. 4 issued its mandate in a case on the president's ability to make trade-restrictive modifications to Section 201 safeguards. In August, the court partially reconsidered its initial decision finding that the president can make such adjustments (see 2408130019). The court conducted a de novo review of the applicable statute in its decision following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which said courts can't defer to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes. The appellate court issued its mandate in the case after the Solar Energy Industries Association didn't appeal the matter to the Supreme Court (Solar Energy Industries Association v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in an Aug. 13 opinion again affirmed the president's ability to make trade-restrictive modifications to Section 201 safeguard tariffs. Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark partially granted a group of solar cell exporters' motion for panel rehearing of its 2023 decision, which came to the same conclusion, so that the court could conduct a de novo review of the applicable statute, instead of reviewing whether the president's interpretation of the law was a "clear misconstruction" of the statute.
The Court of International Trade earlier this month heard oral argument on whether a CBP protest denial effectively revoked a prior CBP protest decision by applying a different tariff classification to identical merchandise, and should have been subject to a notice-and-comment period (Under the Weather v. U.S., CIT # 21-00211).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated April 30 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Solar panel exporters, led by the Solar Energy Industries Association, urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to rehear their case on President Donald Trump's decision to revoke a Section 201 tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels (Solar Energy Industries Association v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-1392).
Turkish duties on a host of U.S. products in retaliation for President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs violate World Trade Organization commitments, a WTO dispute panel ruled Dec. 19. The panel said the duties violate articles I and II of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and also found that the Section 232 duties are not "safeguards."
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The U.S. articulated a theory of fraud but did not "plead fraud with particularity" in its case against importer Katana Racing seeking over $5.7 million in unpaid safeguard duties on Chinese tires, Katana argued in a renewed motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. Again seeking to dispatch of the case following the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's remand kicking the matter back to the trade court, the importer said the govenrment's case did not touch on the "who, what, when, where, and how of the alleged fraud" as required by the Supreme Court in making a pleading, particularly one for fraud (United States v. Katana Racing, CIT # 19-00125).
President Donald Trump didn't clearly misconstrue the statute when he revoked a Section 201 tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Nov. 13. Granting the president wider discretion to make modifications to Section 201 duties, Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark said that the statute -- Section 2254(b)(1)(B) of the Trade Act of 1930 -- allows for trade-restricting modifications, as opposed to only trade-liberalizing ones.