2020 International Trade Decisions of the Federal Circuit

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) hears appeals from the U.S. District Courts as well as the U.S. Court of International Trade (“CIT”) about trade-related matters. The 2020 term of the CAFC with respect to appeals from the CIT included fewer precedential decisions and a move to telephonic hearings in light of Covid-19. The resulting decisions included, as usual, mostly antidumping appeals, but also a handful of classification and countervailing duty cases. In the following pages, this Article provides a selection of those decisions that may have a bearing on similar cases moving through the system.

These include a significant classification decision involving Apple’s iPad smart covers, numerous antidumping cases in which the Court struggled with the degree of deference to provide both the U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Customs and Border Protection in its handling of those cases, and a unique case involving both a countervailing duty and an antidumping order on a single firm.