United States v. Yoshida Intern., Inc.
Decision Date | 06 November 1975 |
Docket Number | Customs Appeal No. 75-6. |
Citation | 526 F.2d 560 |
Parties | The UNITED STATES, Appellant, v. YOSHIDA INTERNATIONAL, INC., Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) |
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Andrew P. Vance, Chief, Customs Section, Civil Division, Department of Justice, New York City, for the United States.
E. Thomas Honey, Barnes, Richardson & Colburn, New York City, for Yoshida International, Inc.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the Customs Court, 73 Cust.Ct. 1, C.D. 4550, 378 F.Supp. 1155 (1974), granting Yoshida's motion for summary judgment, and declaring an import duty surcharge invalid. Presidential Proclamation 4074, because it imposed the surcharge, was held to have been beyond the President's delegated powers. The court stated that a delegation of sufficient breadth to encompass the proclamation would have been unconstitutional. We reverse.
Yoshida's merchandise (zippers) was imported from Japan and entered the port of New York on August 17, 25, and 26, 1971. The government levied, in addition to the standard duty under TSUS item 745.72, an import duty surcharge of 10% in accordance with item 948.00, which was added to the TSUS by Presidential Proclamation 4074.1 Yoshida challenges only the validity of Proclamation 4074.
American Importers Association, Inc., filed a brief amicus curiae seeking, in the event of an affirmance, a declaration that the liquidations herein were null and void and the protests premature, the effect of which would be to remove barriers to a refund of amounts exacted by the surcharge. The government filed an opposing brief. The judgment below being reversed, the requests of amicus must be dismissed as moot.
During the summer of 1971, the United States was faced with an economic crisis. The nation suffered under an exceptionally severe and worsening balance of payments deficit. The gold reserve backing of the U. S. dollar had dropped from $17.8 billion in 1960 to less than $10.4 billion in June of 1971,2 reflecting a growing lack of confidence in the U. S. dollar abroad. Foreign exchange rates were being controlled by some of our major trading partners in such a way as to overvalue the U. S. dollar. That action, by stimulating U. S. imports and restraining U. S. exports, contributed substantially to the balance of payments deficit.3 As one step in a program designed to meet the economic crisis,4 the President issued Proclamation 4074, which in relevant part stated:
To implement the above language, Proclamation 4074 established the following item 948.00 of subpart C, part 2, of the TSUS Appendix:
Item Article Rates of duty 1 2 948.00 Articles, except as exempted under headnote 5 of this subpart which are not free of duty under these schedules and which are the subject of tariff concessions granted by the United States in trade agreements .................... 10% ad val... No change (See headnote 3 of this subpart.)
The referenced headnote 3 reads as follows:
3. Limitation on additional duties — The additional 10 percent rate of duty specified in rate of duty column numbered 1 of item 948.00 shall in no event exceed that rate which, when added to the column numbered 1 rate imposed on the imported article under the appropriate item in schedules 1 through 7 of these schedules, would result in an aggregated rate in excess of the rate provided for such article in rate of duty column numbered 2.
The President's authority for proclaiming the surcharge was stated in Proclamation 4074 to be:
Importers of products subject to the surcharge sought and obtained permission from the Cost of Living Council to pass the surcharge through to customers as a part of the price of the imported articles.5
Within less than five months following imposition of the surcharge, a multilateral agreement (The "Smithsonian Agreement" of December 18, 1971) among the major industrial nations was reached6 which, inter alia, gave promise of ending the overvaluation of the U. S. dollar in relation to other major currencies. On December 20, 1971, the import duty surcharge was terminated. (Presidential Proclamation 4098, 36 Fed.Reg. 24201 (1971).)
The main opinion below7 dealt extensively with the President's termination and emergency powers, finding that neither encompassed the tariff surcharge promulgated in Proclamation 4074.
The President's termination power, as expressed in the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (Tariff Act) and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (TEA), was construed as follows:
The Government's reliance on the phrase "unless otherwise provided" in general headnote 4(d) of the tariff schedules8 was met with these words:
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