US Agrees to Grant Section 232 Exclusions to 13 of Steel Slab Importer's Entries
The U.S. agreed to apply Section 232 steel tariff exclusions to 13 of importer California Steel Industries' entries. Filing a stipulated judgment at the Court of International Trade on March 11, California Steel and the government said they settled all issues in the case, additionally noting that Section 232 duties applied to one of the importer's entries will be "final and non-protestable" (California Steel Industries v. United States, CIT # 21-00015).
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California Steel initially took to the trade court in 2021 to contest 193 exclusion denials -- 170 of which were filed in 2018 and 23 of which came in 2020. After court-led mediation fell through (see 2402050019), the Commerce Department reassessed the exclusion denials but continued to deny them all. After the remand, California Steel only continued to challenge 31 of the 2018 requests, which covered a total of 1.373 million metric tons of steel slab.
In December 2024, the trade court assessed California Steel's claims and said that Commerce failed to consider whether U.S. Steel Corp., the sole objector to the exclusion requests, had the capacity to fill the aggregate of California Steel's exclusion requests as opposed to just assessing whether U.S. Steel could fill all of them individually (see 2412160051). The court also said Commerce didn't address U.S. Steel's concession that it couldn't timely supply more slab than it contracted for with California Steel.
The court granted injunctive relief, telling Commerce that it must tell CBP to honor any exclusion requests, should the agency decide to grant any of the requests. The present settlement followed.