International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Court of International Trade held oral arguments on Feb. 7 in the massive litigation over the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs. During the nearly two-hour affair, Judges Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves probed the parties' positions on whether the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative complied with the Administrative Procedure Act by properly considering comments made on the proposed tariffs when imposing the duties on $500 billion of Chinese goods (In Re Section 301 Cases, CIT # 21-00052).

CBP is now detaining polyvinyl chloride products for forced labor under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, customs lawyer Ted Murphy said in a client alert Feb. 7. That’s in addition to a newfound focus on aluminum (see 2301120046), as well as the high priority sectors listed in the UFLPA statute: cotton, tomatoes and polysilicon, Murphy said.

President Donald Trump legally expanded the Section 232 national security tariffs to include steel and aluminum "derivative" products despite implementing the expansion beyond procedural deadlines laid out in the statute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a Feb. 7 opinion. Relying on the appellate court's opinion in Transpacific Steel v. U.S., in which the court said that the president can adjust the tariffs beyond these time limits if it relates to the original plan of action laid out in the initial Section 232 tariff action, the Federal Circuit said that the expansion of the tariffs was related to the original plan.

In West Virginia, where the first House Ways and Means Committee hearing of the new Congress was held since the Republicans won the majority, the members asked questions of business owners, and were hosted by a mid-sized business that sells hardwood lumber to furniture makers, cabinetmakers and flooring manufacturers.

A protest of a CBP decision must be filed within 180 days of liquidation and not the date the Commerce Department issues antidumping and countervailing duty instructions to CBP or the date CBP denies an importer's refund request, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a Feb. 6 opinion. Upholding a Court of International Trade decision, judges Timothy Dyk, Richard Taranto and Todd Hughes dismissed a case from importer Acquisition 362, doing business as Strategic Import Supply, that challenges a CBP assessment of countervailing duties, on the grounds that the company failed to file a protest.

An executive order to address supply chain challenges is not that easy to put into practice, since the private sector runs the supply chains, and companies are either reluctant to share their information with the government or may not know their own supply chains, according to a new GAO report.

CBP will give customs brokers nearly two more months to comply with a new requirement to submit lists of all current employees to CBP via the ACE Portal, the agency said in a CSMS message. Brokers will now have until April 14 to comply with the requirement from the recent customs broker modernization final rule (see 2210170071). The deadline had previously been Feb. 17 (see 2212190056).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending exclusions until May 15 on 81 medical products that would otherwise be subject to Section 301 duties, according to a pre-publication version of a Federal Register notice posted to its website. It also is seeking comments on whether the exclusions should be renewed past that time. The comment portal at http://comments.USTR.gov will open Feb. 6 and will close just before midnight on March 7. The exclusions had previously been scheduled to expire Feb. 28.

CBP is lifting its forced labor finding on Malaysian palm oil producer Sime Darby Plantation Berhad, after finding that, ”based upon additional information" Sime Darby provided to CBP that "establishes by satisfactory evidence that the subject palm oil and derivative products are no longer mined, produced, or manufactured in any part with forced labor,” the agency said in a notice released Feb. 2.