## Facts

- The International Trade Commission (ITC) conducted a safeguard investigation under § 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 covering, among other products, tin mill products.
- The ITC commissioners took differing approaches to defining the relevant domestic industry for tin mill products:
  - Four commissioners treated tin mill products as a separate industry; among them, one found serious injury for tin mill products and three did not.
  - Two commissioners treated tin mill products and carbon flat-rolled steel as a single combined industry and found serious injury to the combined industry.
- The President treated the ITC’s outcome as an “evenly divided” vote on serious injury regarding tin mill products and, by statute, deemed it an affirmative injury determination.
- Based on that injury determination, the President imposed a three-year ad valorem duty on tin mill imports.
- Corus (foreign steel producers/exporters and affiliated entities) sued in the Court of International Trade (CIT), arguing the vote was not properly “evenly divided” and the ITC’s explanation was inadequate.
- The CIT entered summary judgment for the government.
- Corus appealed to the Federal Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether the ITC’s fragmented commissioner votes could be treated as an “evenly divided” vote on serious injury for tin mill products, thereby triggering the President’s statutory authority to impose safeguard duties.
2. Whether a challenge attacking the coherence or sufficiency of the ITC’s explanation was judicially reviewable where the requested relief would invalidate the President’s safeguard duty.

## Decision

- The Federal Circuit affirmed the CIT’s judgment.
- The court held the ITC’s voting configuration could be aggregated to reflect an evenly divided serious-injury determination for tin mill products within the meaning of the Trade Act.
- The court held Corus’s challenge to the ITC’s reasoning, as framed and remedied, functioned as an attack on the President’s safeguard action and was not reviewable in the manner sought.

## Legal Principles

- Under § 201 safeguard procedures, an ITC vote that is “equally divided” on serious injury is treated as an affirmative injury determination for purposes of presidential action.
- The statutory “evenly divided” mechanism turns on the numerical division on the injury question and does not require a single shared rationale (such as a uniform industry definition) among commissioners on the same side of the bottom-line outcome.
- Where the practical objective and requested relief are to set aside the President’s safeguard remedy, claims framed as defects in the ITC’s explanation may be rejected as an impermissible attempt to obtain judicial review of presidential discretion in imposing safeguards.

## Conclusion

The Federal Circuit upheld the safeguard duty on tin mill imports, concluding that the ITC’s split positions could be treated as an evenly divided injury determination triggering presidential authority and that Corus’s explanation-based challenge was, in substance, an unreviewable attack on the President’s discretionary safeguard action.


Corus Grp. PLC v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 352 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2003)