on this case or are not in dispute here in the two years in question mr stevens income drop his income from salmon fishing which was a certified product dropped dramatically to around twenty five percent of the amount that it was in the first year during that same time period its income reported to the i r s under schedule c increased modestly because of that the secretary denied mr steen benefits on the grounds that his net fishing declined from two thousand and one to two thousand and two two years in question was there any question as to the inclusion if any of the other income sources besides fishing in the schedule c your honor schedule c is it is the ira's mechanism for reporting income from sole proprietorships at the time that mr steen submitted his schedule c information he also submitted information to demonstrate to the secretary what the amount of that income was that was related what i'm trying to get at is we've got salmon fishing all fishing and all sources including some that may not include fish and i just want to there are some c i t cases involving the question of whether you get the schedule c includes income other than fishing that is i take it not at issue in this case in this case your honor of including income from how about fishing it also included spain submitted to the to the secretary of the information that was requested at the time by the regulations he was required to submit a schedule c information he did so on the problem as we see it in the statute certain additional provisions that are contained both in that section dealing with individual producer benefits and with an earlier section of the statute in addition we believe that this finally your argument would apply i take it equally if this were a farming kens i mean if you were raising new potatoes and suddenly new potatoes were imported i suspect you're on our own my importation issue is not the same but but it would be the same argument would it not in certain respects it would be the same argument in other respects i think there's differences between how you different for one i mean i understand that the term is not there but the but the secretary and you don't disagree with the secretary's having created the concept of net fishing and when i refer you disagree with the implementation of that term but the the producer or the fisherman is required to submit schedule c which is not limited in our spell except that the could see it to cases i was referring to earlier seemed to have limited to the to the fishing in comp but i mean as such is that the only difference otherwise it pales when i think you're on the other difference would be just in terms of the breath i mean there clearly the secretary has some discretion in terms of what should be or not included in that form and efficient and we're not disputing but in the problem we have with the particular definition that they've employed particularly with respect and efficient income is that it ignores these other statutory provisions i guess that part of the argument would be the same but they're talking about directs the secretary and situations where separate products are included in a commodity to treat the separate products differently and treat each one as a commodity for purposes several of the considerations in section twenty four  which is the section on group eligibility but also for purposes of section twenty four one if in fact the secretary is to treat separate products within a commodity a separate commodities for purposes of twenty four one fish sandwich and fish the only part of the jewish which is not really a fish is a crop the aspect of the generic type of commodity coming out of the ocean of the secretary at least able to make those all in one fungible commodity no your honor because how a bit is not subject to certain cation here the only product that separates certification here is sam the only product that has been demonstrated in twenty four of one a to be suffering from import competition salmon it would be in our view be inappropriate for the secretary and it was inappropriate to consider other sources of income even if they're coming from the ocean for purposes of making that consideration there isn't in fact under the secretary's own interpretation of the law he's not entitled to make blanket decisions with respect to fish in general and fishermen in general its  fish that was being fished in the us and it was competing with fish that was being caught in the wild from other countries that would not be a proper subject of certification that would not involve the culture proper culture you need to have a farm product on one or the other side of the equation either it's got to be a farm domestic product or it's got to be a domestic product in this case fish caught in the wild that's competing with a farm product that was import so i don't think given the in order to reach net income you need to know what the expenses are recording that particular determination yes so if i finish was shamming and i make two thousand dollars net income from sam we would be accurate that maybe the cost of that particular gross revenue would have to be deducted in order to get to the net income so yes acquiring the secretary also determine the cost  yes or so would the secretary really do that well the secretary could i mean i you know the facts of this case we certainly provided a net income when it came to fishing from all sources and for his schedule c he also provided income data for his schedule for is income from fishing for salmon if in fact the secretary believed that on investigation he could not attribute a percentage of the  expenses to sam and he could have asked for additional information is stored to support the decision but in the shadows you have to show you you have all of your expenses all lumped together and all of your income went together yes we do your show trying to for that particular the trauma nation would be so much more difficult for both parties to admit well your honor that was what was required by the secretary at the time i mean the only thing that was required by the secretary at that time was honor because schedule c is not tied to the certified product but that's what was requested of mr seen at that time and others i mean that was the only if you looked at the regulations at the time your honor that's all that was required it was schedule c data and in fact the honor but the department secretary could ever quest i believe the additional information inconsistent with the remedial nature of the stand and the way that the courts have always interpreted the obligations on the part of the  secretary and part of the applicant it would seem to me that if in fact that was going to be the basis of the decision the secretary should have given mr stream an opportunity to supplement the response and provide the additional information if he felt that that which a fisherman whose actual fishing income from salmon increases but it has been counting decreases dollars and at that point it would be a progressive elimination of the only thing you think the situation could be read or versions of money could get one phone and you know when for your honor it's ten thousand dollars maximum and it's really not any benefits but in that sense yes sure i mean it would be totally tied to factors absolutely independent from work competition one further question on the net farm income you've you've  argued that fishing income ought to be specific to the commodity that's that's being imported would you make the same argument with respect to the term net farm income if this were a farm case honor i believe it should be i mean i still it's kind of an odd it to say net farm income means net potatoes income if you're a farmer who's farming potatoes turnips carrots and and beans right that's not a natural way to read the language i would think in which way you're on approach to say that net farm income the statutory term net farm income ought to be interpreted to mean net income from one commodity even though your total farm income is a very large much larger and different number but your honor there are there are in the first instance it's not farm income as determined by the secretary well and she said secondly in that very section of the statute the very beginning says that benefits will be conferred cash benefits will be available to those adversely affected commodity producers covered by the server cation eversley effect appear prior to that in the statute and i don't believe it appears anywhere else in the statute that firstly affected doesn't mean by reason of import and the question is what does it mean and then we have the provision we cited earlier in twenty four one eighty two in which it does tell you that it is different if different classes of goods are wrong that they should make the determination with respect to how we have consumed your rebuttal time the question  state principle businesses so therefore let you do it well not quite because if i understand it there's bennett and i believe you've been lawyer on all of these cases so i suspect you're familiar with all of them there's been several c i t cases involving the question of whether when you say set schedule c you really mean everything on schedule c and to take my case of the fisherman who not only has income from halibut and salmon but also runs a pleasure boat cruise business on the side he lumps all of those into schedule c is it the government's position that at least under the the old form of the regulation or is schedule c because if not if the secretary says schedule c except when schedule c doesn't seem to be an appropriate measure or something then we're looking at a different kind of difference do you understand my point yes your honor and under the payments under those are recorded on i r s schedule c or c c well it's a little ambiguous because it's net fishing income is the profits but profits of what profits and all income of the sole proprietorship  profits only from fish well what's the government's position on this you've you've had several of these cases what's your position that we that particular situation where the schedule c is compassed income other than fishing business as far as i'm rude a case called true tron well if it happened i did it i don't want to say it hasn't come up so late that all that does that ring a bell so the not definitely rings a bell here all right that was a case in which there was actually a discussion on this very issue but i don't waste a lot of time on this because as you say that's not exactly this case but i do want to try to get an idea of what the government's position on this is on this in order to be able to say either your position is that it's schedule c or your position is  making a determination that the secretary i believe would have to make the first line and i believe the secretary would would deserve deference and making that determination if that was addition from the secretary because the secretary does have the right equivalent of a separate commodity over one twenty four a one a refers to twenty four one he is referring to the instances where twenty four when he specifically uses affected agricultural commodity which is twenty four a one a one a and a one gene there's no basis to believe that congress when implementing a statute would use affected our cultural commodity and one subsection and then use  farming come to mean the exact same thing in a subsection that's only one subsection way congress usenet farm and now the because the secretary determined that this would apply to fishermen in certain instances that the secretary inform regulation which would use which would apply the net farm income requirement which is what it is a requirement to fisher and the secretary is regulation to find that fishing income for all right well i think you if that's what you really mean you've answered the question that i was asking at the beginning as to which you said the secretary hadn't really taken a position because if what you really mean is that it excludes non fish in common then we've answered the schedule  respect to cases in which there is a non fishing income some nation interpret as a privilege which but but you don't know what it is with respect to these cases in which there is other income i don't think that determination has been made by the secretary  gross and probation so congress clearly knew about it the singlish gross income from net income and knew how to distinguish when it was drafting this legislation net income from income from the affected agricultural commodity if congress had intended a fisherman a farmer or a fisherman to qualify for the statue soley based upon a decline in income from their affected agricultural commodity congress would have put in the legislation the producers net income from the agricultural commodity to freeze not their net farming which in this case the secretary is reasonably appl would have thought this was something that was sui generous but then i came across other cases in the court international trade began to i'm not sure how much of the iceberg there is beneath this little ok and how many of them are there have there been before the c i t roughly i mean i believe in the sixty's sixty's of cases yes ok and dealing with this fishing are farm and fishing not counting the ones dealing with people who you know who who work in factories know all those kinds yesterday that the motorola tech solely with regard to department of agriculture as distinguished from department of labor right  would just like to point out there in the statute sylvia brown referred to that is that when the when congress put a limit on income in two and a half million dollars of adjusted gross income on they specifically referred to they made a statutory reference they knew how to refer to the statute when it was important for them to do so in defining their farmin the government continues to point out that there was a generally accepted definition to the internal revenue service regulations that you there's nothing in the statute itself that would direct you specifically to any particular definition of  responsibility that is the department of agriculture's and transfer to the internal revenue service because as the internal revenue service dictates what needs to be put on schedule c that's what was submitted and that was c if it if someone had only one fishing commodity exam that's it and that person reported net fishing income from that one commodity on schedule c would you have a quarrel with the calculation of net fishing income as it shows up and schedule c or would you agree that that is an appropriate way of calculating net income for that one commodity what i'm asking is that when you say the secretary has to make a case by case determination what i'm asking is if you set aside your concerns about the multiple commodities and then perhaps even non fishing activities set those aside and just look at one commodity are you arguing that schedule c is an inappropriate proxy for net income period are you simply saying that oh it's fine as long as you are talking about one commodity but he runs into trouble when you talk about multiple deliver your honor if it was just one commodity we have no are not trying to tie the secretaries hands and say you can't look to something the problem here is that what they refer to you know and it's the language for all cases not in that particular instance relate and went there and they looked at to see what income was being reported was a limited to the commodity that was subject to certain cation and then was it reasonable yes you're what they said it was this is what you said made you submit schedule c in all instances and if there's an increase from here to here you lose but there's a decrease you win and we don't hear that it was a big increase or decrease was a result service for a product or that's the problem and the problem with what we put in our submissions in terms of the way salmon income over a period of the one year that spring from one year to the next but had tremendous losses in terms of his other fishing antibodies totally unrelated to your competition totally unrelated to anything this statute was designed to to address he will qualify for benefits because his total income from one year to the next truck whereas in this case we have a demonstration that mr steen had a tremendous drop in income from salmon fishing which is the subject of the certification but because his other income increased enough to offset those losses he's denied benefits the the government has said that what they're addressing is those most harmed by import competition congress has addressed the standards they've decided there's a cut off two and a half million dollars and they've decided that if you can what we believe if you read this correctly is that if you have a loss in income from the certified product of the entitled to relief that's harm from import competition the standards that the government has set up here have nothing to do with  cost of driving that income you know i don't if only shamming would be involved you could throw all your costs against sam and therefore you would be losing money on chairman but making money on other products which are still reported on schedule c we are out of the it department is still assigned with making investigation they still have to look at the reasonableness of the data is that that doesn't go away i mean is it any more reasonable for someone to allocate expenses and to present that to the end of agriculture than it would be to look at something that exists even though it's not tied to the facts of this case it's not tied to the problem and merely say because that number increases from year  so there may be a burden there i've met but at the end of the day isn't that a better solution then having people denied benefits such as mr steam even though he clearly demonstrated his income from salmon drop by seventy five percent from one year that you know i i understand your argument that it looks perhaps at first blush maybe maybe after first blush a little bit perverse but if you look at it in terms of wood which people can be thought to have adjusted to the imports successfully and we don't want to throw benefits in their direction which people have not been able to adjust successfully you might make the case that a person is christine's position has been able to make the transition yes he lost money in one area he moved to another area and he prospered in that other area that's what we want by way of comparative advantage  may be a much more successful in another commodity other than the one that's the import we want to encourage that that's what the whole transition to the areas of that could get you prizes about why isn't that rational for congress and by extension the secretary of agriculture to conclude as a as an approach to the problem was rational your honor and congress did address it but they dressed it by different means than the secretary's address congress said was you will determine the amount dollar amount of your benefits by the amount of your production in marketing here which would in this case be two thousand and two you know if that production is gone down you get less money you don't get the ten thousand dollars you get less they're not saying everybody who qualifies automatically gets him thousand dollars if you producing less you get less that's congress's solution to the pro secretary is there you get nothing that's not congress's solution congress to address this problem secondarily the ability to get retraining benefits which is critical in terms