1. “Whether, in using the term ‘modification’ in Section 204(b)(1)(B), Congress limited the President to ‘trade-liberalizing’ modifications, prohibiting the President from modifying a safeguard to revoke an improvidently-granted exclusion and to slow the rate at which the measure phases down in its fourth year.” 2. “Whether the trial court erred in treating the President’s actions to restore application of the safeguard measure to bifacial panels and to slow the rate at which the measure phased down in its fourth year as trade-restricting ‘increases’ to the safeguard measure.”
1. “We conclude that the President’s interpretation of the applicable statute, which allows him to ‘modify’ an existing safeguard, is not a clear misconstruction. That is, the President’s view that a ‘modification’ may include a change in a trade-restricting direction, and is not limited to trade-liberalizing changes, is not unreasonable.”
2. “In the government’s view, all that Proclamation 10101 accomplished was ‘to restore application of the safeguard measure to bifacial panels and to slow the rate at which the measured phased down in its fourth year,’ neither of which were trade-restricting ‘increases’ in measures imposed on imports. . . . Because we find it was not a clear misconstruction to interpret Section 2254(b)(1)(B) as permitting trade-restrictive modifications to safeguard measures, we need not, and do not, reach this issue.”
