Court of International Trade

The U.S. Court of International Trade’s shift to virtual proceedings amid the pandemic has not impacted its ability to successfully move forward with litigation, Judge Gary Katzmann told Inside U.S. Trade this week, though attorneys involved in CIT cases say some important aspects have been lost in the transition.

The Commerce Department is granting exclusions to steel and aluminum tariffs in an unconstitutional and arbitrarily capricious manner that has put a Michigan-based metal importer at a competitive disadvantage, the company argues in a new Section 232 challenge filed with the U.S. Court of International Trade.

The Court of International Trade last week denied a Trump administration motion to dismiss a challenge lodged by a U.S. importer of steel products over the president’s decision last August to ratchet up Section 232 tariffs on steel from Turkey.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is poised to move on a case involving a Section 232 challenge initiated by the American Institute for International Steel after receiving responses from the group and the Trump administration.

The American Institute for International Steel last week brought its Section 232 case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after the Supreme Court in June declined to hear its argument challenging the constitutionality of the statute used to employ national security-based steel tariffs.

The Supreme Court should heed precedent and not consider an international steel group’s constitutional challenge of the national security-based statute President Trump has used to employ tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the Justice Department argued this week.

Attorneys representing the Trump administration last week argued that President Trump's decision to double a tariff on Turkish steel imports was legal, saying in a push to dismiss a challenge to his authority that he did not have to obtain a new report from the Commerce Department beforehand.

The Court of International Trade on Monday ruled that President Trump's imposition of steel tariffs based on national security was constitutional, though one of the three judges filed a separate opinion outlining “grave” concerns.

The “Automotive Jobs Act,” announced last July, would direct the ITC to “conduct a comprehensive study of the well-being, health, and vitality of the United States automotive industry before tariffs could be applied.”