The inaugural use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, which saw President Donald Trump set a 10% duty on all goods from China (see 2502030044), has sparked plenty of speculation as to how these tariffs could be challenged in court. One such argument is a statutory claim rooted in the text of IEEPA.

Trade Law Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week, in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Commerce Department properly excluded in-transit mattresses from the calculation of constructed export price (CEP) for respondent PT. Zinus Global Indonesia in the antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Indonesia, the Court of International Trade held on Feb. 18. Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also sustained Commerce's exclusion of the selling expenses of Zinus Indonesia's parent company Zinus Korea from the normal value calculation.

For the third time, the Court of International Trade remanded part of the Commerce Department’s final results of an antidumping duty review on multilayered wood flooring from China.

The Supreme Court's holding in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which eliminated the concept of deferring to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes, "does not affect" the Court of International Trade's review of the differential pricing analysis, the U.S. argued in a Feb. 14 brief (Government of Canada v. United States, CIT # 23-00187).

Dicycles with electric motors and gyroscopic balancing technology, marketed and known as "hoverboards," are "chidren's cycles" and not "bicycles," importer GoLabs, doing business as GOTRAX, argued in a Feb. 14 complaint at the Court of International Trade. As a result, the importer argued that the hoverboards fit under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 9503.00.0090 and not subheading 8711.60.0050 as classified by CBP (GoLabs Inc. v. United States, CIT # 25-00003).

U.S. seafood seller Luscious Seafood pushed back against a petitioner’s argument that it wasn’t a wholesaler of domestic like product for an administrative review of an antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam, saying it faced “higher hurdles” in proving its status than a similarly positioned party (Luscious Seafood v. United States, CIT # 24-00069).

The Solar Energy Industries Association urged the Court of International Trade to not allow CBP to reliquidate entries of solar panels that were subject to a preliminary injunction from CIT, saying during oral arguments this week that there's not a strong enough reason to reverse CBP's inadvertent liquidation. The U.S. argued that a court order was needed to "effectuate" the court's suspension of liquidation and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's decision in the case (Solar Energy Industries Association v. United States, CIT #20-03941).

President Donald Trump's recent executive order halting prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act likely won't change the behavior of many companies, given the risk of prosecution globally or in the U.S. after Trump leaves office, lawyers said.

Japanese exporter Nippon Steel argued Feb. 7 that the standard that respondents comply with antidumping and countervailing duty reviews to the best of their ability doesn’t require respondents to break their own governments’ laws (Nippon Steel Corporation v. United States, CIT Consol. # 21-00533).