US Gets More Time to Respond to SCOTUS Petition in Broad Section 232 Challenge

The Supreme Court of the U.S. in a Jan. 5 order gave the government more time to respond to a petition in a broad challenge to President Donald Trump's Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. The U.S. now has until Feb. 21 to respond after arguing that it needed additional time due to the "heavy press of earlier assigned cases to the attorneys handling this matter" (USP Holdings v. United States, U.S.S.C. #22-0565)

In February 2021, the Court of International Trade issued its decision in the case, denying the broad challenge to the Section 232 tariffs (see 2102040026). The trade court rejected all the plaintiffs' claims, which included the arguments that the secretary's report failed to establish an imminent threat to the domestic industry, that the threat determination was not backed by substantial evidence and that the president erred by not laying out the nature and duration of the tariffs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court's positions on all the claims. Responding to the imminent threat arguments, the judges ruled that the statute imposes no imminence requirement, also finding that the statute grants the president the discretion to set the nature and duration of the tariffs (see 2206090047). The plaintiffs, led by Universal Steel Products, then filed their petition for a writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court on Dec. 13, 2022.

Back at the trade court, though, the plaintiffs moved to voluntarily dismiss one count in its case, in a Jan. 6 motion. The plaintiffs moved to toss the fourth count of the case, which concerns Trump's increase of the tariffs on imports from Turkey. The plaintiffs said that the tariff increases on Turkish goods "were proclaimed more than 90 days after the Commerce Report was delivered to the President." The trade court then dismissed the count (Universal Steel Products v. United States, CIT # 19-00209).

The claim was addressed in July 2021 by the Federal Circuit when the appellate court said that the president could take further Section 232 action beyond the 105-day time frame for action set out in the statute so long as it is part of a broader "plan of action" (see 2107130059). Lewis Leibowitz, counsel for the plaintiffs, described the move as "housekeeping" following the Transpacific decision. "After the Federal Circuit decided the case, the court asked whether there was anything left for the CIT to decide regarding Count Four. There is not -- so we dismissed Count Four," he said.