The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, has embarked on a campaign to repeal the U.S. government’s power to exclude unfairly imported products into the United States for sale in this country. The institute abhors labeling itself by “libertarian” or any other term, so I will refer to it by one of the labels that it prefers to use on its website dedicated to “expanding civil society while reducing political society.”
Cato’s effort is advanced by articles authored by Bill Watson, a Cato trade-policy analyst whose work is described by Cato as focusing on “U.S. trade remedy policies, disguised protectionism, and the institutional aspects of global trade liberalization.” Watson aims Cato’s lance at § 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a litigation forum that determines whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection should exclude from entry into America foreign-made products that infringe the U.S. patents of a domestic industry. This patent litigation is conducted before administrative law judges of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). For 14 years, I litigated Section 337 cases before the ITC as a staff attorney and as a clerk for its administrative law judges.
