UNITED SHOE WORKERS OF AM., AFL-CIO v. BEDELL, 506 F.2d 174 (D.C. Cir. 1974)

UNITED SHOE WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, ET AL., APPELLANTS, v. CATHERINE BEDELL, CHAIRMAN, ET AL.

No. 72-1554.United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.Argued September 6, 1973.
Decided October 23, 1974.

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John Silard, Washington, D.C., with whom Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellants.

Stephen F. Eilperin, Atty., Dept. of Justice, with whom Harold H. Titus, Jr., U.S. Atty., at the time brief was filed, and Morton Hollander, Atty., Dept. of Justice, were on the brief, for appellees. Alan S. Rosenthal, Atty., Dept. of Justice, also entered an appearance for appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and LEVENTHAL and ROBINSON, Circuit Judges

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SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

[1] Section 301(a)(2) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962[1]
authorizes a labor union, on behalf of its members, to petition the United States Tariff Commission for “adjustment assistance”[2] when, as provided by Section 301(c)(2), increased importation of “an article like or directly competitive with an article produced by such workers’ firm” has “caus[ed], or threaten[ed] to cause, unemployment or underemployment” of such workers.[3] Appellants[4] brought this action in the District Court seeking a judgment declaring that adjustment assistance is available to workers when the market for the article their firm produces is being injured or threatened by imported articles that contain the firm’s product as a component.[5] Both appellants and appellees[6] filed motions for summary judgment, and the District Court granted judgment in favor of appellees.[7]

[2] After setting out the procedural background of this appeal,[8] we trace the historical development of the phrase “like or directly competitive” through earlier trade acts[9]
and the passage of the Trade Expansion Act.[10] We also consider the effect of the legislative definition of “directly competitive” in construing the word “like”[11] and the relevancy of a current act that includes the same phrase.[12]
We affirm the judgment of the District Court. We hold that imported finished women’s shoes are not

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“like”[13] domestic components of women’s shoes within the meaning of Section 301(c)(2).

[3] I. PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
[4] Brown Counter Company manufactures counters[14] for women’s shoes and sells them solely to domestic manufacturers of ready-to-wear shoes. A counter is a necessary component of a normal shoe[15] because the leather in the heel of the shoe could not hold its shape without the reinforcement the counter provides. Shoe manufacturers generally purchase counters from independent suppliers like Brown instead of making them in their own factories.

[5] Appellants petitioned the Tariff Commission, contending that the increased importation of “wholly assembled women’s footwear,” brought on by tariff concessions, had severely reduced domestic production of shoes and consequently had diminished the demand for domestic counters. The Commission found that importation of counters for women’s shoes had been “negligible or nil” and rejected appellants’ petition,[16] stating that it “does not regard imports of women’s footwear containing counters to be `directly competitive’ with counters.”[17] Appellants’ motion for reconsideration by the Commission was denied.

[6] Appellants’ action was then brought in the District Court for review of the Commission’s decision. The court found the Commission’s conclusion “appealing on semantic, legal and practical grounds,”[18] and held that “component part manufacturers must of necessity be excluded from the adjustment assistance scheme of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.”[19]
Accordingly, summary judgment for appellees was granted.

[7] Appellants first argue that the District Court’s judgment is contrary to the plain meaning of Section 301(c)(2). They also maintain that the decision is inconsistent with the congressional intent and purpose revealed in the legislative history of the Trade Expansion Act. Finally, appellants assert that the interpretation of analogous statutory provisions requires reversal. We find none of these contentions persuasive.

[8] In construing statutes, courts must first look to the language of the legislation;[20] if its language “admits of no more than one meaning, the duty of interpretation does not arise . . . .”[21]

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This task cannot be performed by looking at a single word in isolation.[22] Appellants and appellees both present us with arguments assigning a plain meaning to “like” in Section 301(c)(2). We have scrutinized the Trade Expansion Act in its entirety and are unable to accept either argument. The strongest conclusion yielded by our analysis of the bare language of the Act is that it could be read to embrace either interpretation.

[9] When the meaning of a word in a statute is not clear from the language of the statute itself, “there must be recourse to all the aids available in the process of construction, to history and analogy and practice as well as to the dictionary.”[23] We turn first to legislative history of the Act and preceding analogous provisions.

[10] II. THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE TRADE EXPANSION ACT[11] A. Prior Legislation
[12] In 1934, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act[24] launched a reciprocal trade agreements program. The Act was one of several emergency measures adopted to revive our economy, and was the first relaxation of the solid tariff wall erected by the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.[25] The trade agreements program has since become a standard feature in our national economic policy.

[13] The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act authorized the President to negotiate with other countries a mutual lowering of tariffs.[26] This authorization was a bold new step, however, and the inability to forecast the effects of tariff concessions resulted in embodiment in most trade agreements of an escape clause allowing for modification or withdrawal of the concessions.[27]

[14] In 1947, an executive order established a standard clause to be included in every trade agreement.[28] To trigger an invocation of the standard clause, a domestic manufacturer had to show that an imported product was “like or similar” to his product, and had caused or threatened to cause him serious injury.[29] Shortly after issuance of this order, the General Agreement on Tariff and

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Trade[30] was signed in Geneva; it changed the word “similar” to “directly competitive,”[31] and this new term was adopted in 1949 by another executive order.[32]

[15] When Congress enacted the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951,[33] it adopted the “like or directly competitive” formula as the criterion for invoking escape-clause protection.[34] The first congressional indication of the meaning of this phrase came during the debates on the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1955.[35] Senator Morse introduced an amendment to the 1951 Act[36] that, in his view, would have given producers of “raw materials and components” the procedural right to be heard before the Tariff Commission.[37] On its face, the Morse amendment would have afforded component parts manufacturers the same relief as manufacturers of finished products, even if the “like or directly competitive” article entered the United

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States as a component of a finished product.[38]

[16] The Executive Branch obviously understood the amendment to have this effect;[39] through its counsel it commented that the amendment “would be impossible to administer” and would “permit . . . manufacturers of nuts and bolts to claim escape-clause relief on account of the importation of automobiles.”[40] This reading of the proposed amendment finds additional support in Senator Morse’s expressed concern that a Tariff Commission holding had brought domestic manufacturers of finished products within the scope of the 1951 Act, but had excluded producers of “raw material or components from which the finished product [was] prepared.”[41] Congress rejected the Morse amendment.[42]

[17] B. The Trade Expansion Act
[18] The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 must be viewed in this historical context. Until 1962, increased tariffs and withdrawal of concessions were the only options available to the President for relief of domestic manufacturers and their employees from increased imports due to trade concessions.[43] The Act, for the first time, gave the President the alternative remedy of adjustment assistance. There is no evidence, however, that Congress intended this new approach to benefit producers of component parts when the allegedly competing item has been processed into an entirely new article. Indeed, the legislative history compels the opposite conclusion.

[19] During the congressional hearings[44] and debates,[45] the adjustment assistance provisions received considerable attention. There were numerous protests that some workers would receive preferential treatment over others.[46] More importantly, there were informative statements by key legislators dealing with the precise question confronting this court.

[20] Some members of the House Ways and Means Committee analyzed the adjustment assistance provision as follows:

The displacement of a group of workers of the firm producing an article affected by imports, also affects the jobs of workers of other firms supply-services or components to the firm producing the article. The latter receive no special consideration under the bill, although equally affected by the same governmental act.[47]

[21] On the floor of the House, Representative Utt gave an example of his understanding of the bill:

Corporation A goes out of business because of imports. It had 500 employees.

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Corporation B, which was the sole supplier of that firm goes out of business. One of them received a plush, plush unemployment training program. The other receives nothing.[48]

[22] A similar view was reflected in the report of the Senate Finance Committee, which expressed concern that

[a] person whose unemployment is caused by the executive granting concessions to destroy his job will draw a higher rate of unemployment compensation, for a longer period, than his neighbor who is secondarily unemployed because his employment was based upon goods or services provided to the business which closed because of imports.[49]

[23] Appellants contend that much of this legislative history is of no weight in interpreting the Trade Expansion Act because the statements present the views of its opponents. Solely the views of the proponents, they assert, may be examined.[50]

[24] We recognize that statements in legislative debates are generally not an appropriate source to discern the meaning of statutory language.[51] The principle that appellants invoke is, however, “rather an axiom of experience than a rule of law and does not preclude consideration of persuasive evidence if it exists.”[52] Undoubtedly, some statements will receive more weight at all — for example, when they are contradictory or ambiguous. Where there is unanimity between the proponents and opponents of legislation, as here, we perceive no justification for a per se rule disallowing consideration of statements made by opponents of a bill.[53]

[25] Appellants also argue that earlier trade statutes, which were keyed to

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the standard escape-clause protection,[54] are of little value in construing the Trade Expansion Act because adjustment assistance was a new concept. But it is well settled that, absent evidence to the contrary,[55] words or phrases taken from prior legislation will be given the same meaning,[56] since there is hardly a basis for assuming that the lawmakers had anything else in mind. This consideration is even more compelling where, as here, the provision containing the word in question is part of a statute that is merely a continuation of earlier legislative schemes.[57]

[26] The phrase “like or directly competitive” was first adopted by Congress in Section 7 of the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951, the statutory provision originally defining criteria for invoking escape-clause protection.[58] Section 301 of the Trade Expansion Act uses the phrase “like or directly competitive” in the same context as Section 7 of the 1951 Act.[59] Appellants have tried to refute this obvious conclusion by arguing that adjustment assistance was such a new concept that Congress attached a new meaning to the phrase. It does not follow, however, that Congress, merely by providing a new remedy, also sought to extend the scope of the protection, “unless the intent of the legislature to alter the law is evident or the language of the new act is palpably such as to require a different construction.”[60]

[27] Congressman Mills, a manager of the bill in the House, saw the Trade Expansion Act criteria as covering “the type of situation we have always described under the escape clause, where injury has occurred.”[61] Furthermore, adjustment assistance is neither automatic nor exclusive; the older remedies of modifying quotas or duties may still be utilized under the Act.[62] We conclude that drawing on earlier trade statutes to interpret the statute in question is proper.

[28] That Congress rejected an amendment that, on its face, would have given appellants the very protection they now seek, and that the exclusion of component parts manufacturers from the adjustment assistance provisions was recognized during congressional consideration

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of the Trade Expansion Act, is compelling evidence that Congress did not intend its protections to encompass domestic manufacturers of products of a type not imported as distinct articles. We also find it significant that the Tariff Commission, the agency set up by Congress as its expert overseer of the Act, has reached the same conclusion.

[29] The Commission has recently dealt with petitions for adjustment assistance by component parts manufacturers or their employees, and has uniformly denied assistance in such cases.[63] In the Commission’s opinion,

The interpretative technique of aggregating components in various assembled articles is of recent origin. The mischief inherent in this new technique, injected into use after almost a quarter of a century of settled interpretation, is incalculable. Throughout the history of the trade agreements program, tariff negotiations, by all countries, have been conducted on an article-by-article, item-by-item basis on the principle that the import impact would be on like articles or on articles interchangeable therewith or substitutable therefor, i. e., directly competitive articles — not on articles so far removed therefrom in the chain of production as to make them totally unrelated in the market place. In contrast, the interpretation in question commits the Commission to analyses of the trade-off between imports of innumerable components and their effect upon many domestic assemblies and end products of which they are a part, and between imports of various assemblies and end products and their effect upon countless domestic components of the types assembled therein.[64]

[30] Although the decisions in this area have all occurred within the last three years, their roots extend deep in adjudicative history.[65] Nearly forty years ago, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals interpreted the phrase “like or similar” and held that an imported article was “like” a domestic article only if it had “the same or nearly the same appearance, qualities, or characteristics.”[66]

[31] The Tariff Commission took the same position shortly after “like or similar” was legislatively changed to “like or directly

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competitive” in 1951.[67] In a 1952 case,[68] the Commission concluded that an imported glace cherry was not “like or directly competitive” with a domestic sweet cherry.[69]
It held that “[t]he domestic industry producing glace cherries [could] not properly be considered as including the cherry growers,”[70] the producers of domestic sweet cherries.

[32] This construction came shortly after Congress had enacted the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1951. Since, as we have seen, the tenor of “like or directly competitive” in that statute and in the Trade Expansion Act was the same,[71] this decision bears importantly on the constructional problem at hand. “Contemporaneous interpretation of a statute by those designed to oversee it commands great respect, and courts should accept it absent compelling indication that it is wrong.”[72] In the case at bar, the Commission’s interpretations have been wholly consistent,[73] and they have withstood the test of time. We conclude that “[o]nly compelling language in the [new] statute itself would warrant the rejection of a construction so long and so generally accepted.”[74]

[33] III. THE DEFINITION OF “DIRECTLY COMPETITIVE”
[34] The validity of our interpretation of the word “like” is further sustained by the meaning that Congress has expressly ascribed to its statutory companion, “directly competitive.”[75] Appellants maintain that the Commission, to decide whether an imported product is “like” a domestic product, must disassemble the finished imported article and examine its components. Some comparison of the two products is obviously necessary, but the comparison mandated by the Trade Expansion Act adjustment assistance provisions is not that sought by appellants.

[35] An imported product that is “like” a domestic product will ordinarily be directly competitive with that product. Unless Congress, by using “directly competitive” alternatively, intended to embrace articles not within the scope of “like,”[76] the “directly competitive” language is superfluous. From daily experiences, however, we know that many products can be directly competitive without having identical or nearly identical physical characteristics. Normally, the term “directly competitive” invites,

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in the first instance, a comparison of the commercial uses of the products and not their characteristics; the word “like,” in common parlance, does the reverse.[77] When Congress realized that the Tariff Commission was excluding any consideration of characteristics in deciding whether articles are directly competitive,[78] it expressly redefined “directly competitive” in the Trade Expansion Act to cover items that were in different stages of processing.[79]

[36] In arguing for their broad interpretation of “like,” appellants have ignored the impact of this expanded definition of “directly competitive.” Even products that are substantially the same must find protection under the term “directly competitive” rather than the adjective “like.”[80] Thus, one must approach the question whether an imported article is “like” a domestic article with the knowledge that “like” is the more restrictive of the two terms. If the definition of “like” is kept within its proper boundaries, we do not believe that the Commission is directed to look at a finished product and isolate each component to compare the product’s characteristics. Without additional congressional guidance, we believe the comparison begins and ends with the finished product; to do more would be to attach a meaning to the word that is unsupported in either the statute or its legislative history.

[37] If, as appellants urge us to hold, Congress gave “like” a new meaning with the enactment of the Trade Expansion Act, it did so with a curious silence. It is difficult to imagine why Congress would set forth an expanded definition of “directly competitive” in such detail and in the same act leave to chance the understanding of its new meaning of “like.” We think there was no new meaning. The interpretation appellants seek has been sought before. It has been rejected both by the Commission[81]

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and by Congress.[82] We reject it today. The ultimate question in this controversy is what is imported within the meaning of the word “like,” as used in Section 301(c)(2) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, when a finished imported shoe enters the United States — is it the shoe or the counter? We respond, the shoe.[83]

[38] If we accepted appellants’ interpretation, the Act’s protections could extend to every item produced in the United States that encountered competition from abroad due to trade concessions, regardless of the imported items’ characteristics or commercial use. Our interpretation allows the statute to retain its life; appellants’ construction would send death marching upon it in a massive and unmanageable volume of claims.

[39] In holding that “like” must be construed as we do today, we are mindful of the remedial purpose of the adjustment assistance provisions. Those provisions are designed to extend relief to manufacturers and workers who, in consequence of governmental action, find themselves idle or jobless. Such remedial legislation should be construed broadly to effectuate its purpose.[84] But we cannot attach to a statute any objective that would negate the limits clearly intended by the legislature.[85] Congress has made a policy decision and drawn a line; our duty is to give the language of the statute a meaning that will carry out that policy. The result may appear harsh in this day of high unemployment and rising cost of living, but the remedy for congressional policies that do not extend beyond lawful bonds is in the legislature.

[40] IV. THE AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS TRADE ACT
[41] Appellants’ final contention is that judicial construction of the phrase “like or directly competitive” in the Trade Expansion Act should track its meaning in another piece of legislation. The same language appears in the adjustment assistance provision of the Automotive Products Act of 1965,[86] and under that statute component automotive parts imported as constituents of a finished automotive product are “like or directly competitive” with duplicating domestic component parts.[87] Appellants urge that this definition compels the conclusion that the Trade Expansion Act also provides adjustment assistance for domestic manufacturers of non-automotive component parts.

[42] There is no doubt, however, that there are critical differences between the two statutes. In the Automotive Products Trade Act, the term “automotive products,” which immediately precedes “like or directly competitive,”[88] is expressly

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defined to include component parts;[89] the term “an article,” which immediately precedes the same phrase in the Trade Expansion Act,[90] is not at all defined legislatively. In its report on the Automotive Products Trade Act, the House Committee on Ways and Means explained that the phrase “like or directly competitive product” encompasses an imported product “not only when it is a separate unit but also when it is included in an automotive vehicle or in another automotive part or component. . . .”[91] On the other hand, congressional rejection of a definitional counterpart for the Trade Expansion Act is disclosed by its legislative history.[92] Thus, unlike its denial of an expanded scope to the Trade Expansion Act, Congress explicitly extended the protections of the Automotive Products Trade Act to manufacturers of automotive components and parts.

[43] Nevertheless, appellants maintain that the two statutes should be construed in pari materia, and that the identical phrases in question should be given the same meaning.[93] But the assertion of a general principle of statutory interpretation is not by itself enough; we cannot properly construe even related pieces of legislation without due regard to the purposes they respectively serve.[94] We must fully explore the allegedly analogous statute and compare it, in light of the factual situation at hand, with the language and objective of the statute under investigation.

[44] Courts have held statutes to be in pari materia in a variety of circumstances.[95] In the present case, both statutes deal with adjustment assistance for workers. It does not follow, however, that we may read them in pari materia. That treatment is not to be accorded where the statutes, though relating to the same subject matter, have significantly different purposes.[96] When all factors are placed on the scale, we

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think the dissimilar legislative aims tip the balance decisively.[97]

[45] In 1963, Canada initiated a plan, involving reduced tariffs on exports, designed to expand its share of the North American automotive market. Numerous manufacturers in the United States feared that the plan would injure them, and asked the Government to impose import duties.[98] The United States and Canada then entered into an agreement in an attempt to avoid wasteful retaliation;[99] and the Automotive Products Trade Act was drafted to effectuate this agreement. The draftsmen recognized that potentially increased imports and decreased exports created the possibility of dislocations in domestic manufacturing operations, and for that reason they recommended provision of adjustment assistance.[100]

[46] From the outset, special concern was voiced as to the fate of the independent parts manufacturers in the United States.[101]
Senator Hartke, an opponent of the bill, argued that the “crux of the matter lies in what happens to the independent United States parts manufacturer,”[102] and suggested that enactment of the bill would provide strong incentives for parts producers to move their plants to Canada.[103] He quoted the president of a domestic automobile manufacturer as stating that he foresaw “the day when some auto companies may decide to build their entire supply of basic components — frames, engines, transmission, springs — in Canada.”[104] While the potential impact of the bill may have appeared more devastating to its opponents, its proponents

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also realized that the independent parts industry could be adversely affected.[105]

[47] The Automotive Products Trade Act thus developed from a unique situation, and its adjustment assistance provisions were designed to deal with the situation within a single industry.[106] These provisions were never intended to be a carbon copy of the Trade Expansion Act provisions.[107] That automotive workers were to be placed in a favored position vis-a-vis other workers was fully recognized.[108] The statutory language and the legislative histories of the two acts clearly demonstrate their diverging roads. The Trade Expansion Act is a general statute covering all non-automotive products imported into the United States under trade agreements; the Automotive Products Trade Act is a statute enacted to meet a special and unique problem arising between the United States and Canada. To apply appellants’ interpretation of Section 301(c)(2) of the former would be to repeal it by implication judicially[109] and substitute

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Section 302(b) of the latter. The adjustment assistance provisions of the two statutes are incongruent in scope and purpose; each can stand alone and achieve its intended goal without a prop from the other. We leave them as we found them.

[48] The judgment appealed from is accordingly

[49] Affirmed.