The No. 2 official at the Mexican Embassy in the U.S. said that while populist statements about the border have adversely affected the U.S.-Mexico relationship, there's optimism that NAFTA negotiations will be successful. Ambassador Jose Antonio Zabalgoitia, deputy chief of mission, said "we have been reminded that good neighbors can't be taken for granted," speaking June 13 at a Wilson Center event on the U.S.-Mexico border. "Truly the tariffs on steel and aluminum haven't helped the overall environment, the atmosphere of the trade talks," he said, but negotiations continue.
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
The lead negotiator for Mexico in the NAFTA Customs and Trade Facilitation Chapter said much progress has been made, and that governments will elevate many practices to the treaty level and add others. Jose Martin Garcia, representative of the Mexican Finance Ministry and Customs Administration at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, spoke about how an updated NAFTA would benefit cross-border trade during a June 13 panel discussion at the Wilson Center. "We're trying to create a new concept of guidance, something more expeditious," he said, in addition to publicizing advance rulings. The chapter would implement inquiry boards, he said, whereby traders can ask questions about customs rules. Mexico, the U.S. and Canada want to create "transparency and uniformity of treatment for all traders," he said.
The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee spoke about their differences with the Trump administration on trade before questioning nominees for appointed positions in the Commerce Department and on the Court of International Trade. Ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who spoke before the nomination hearing June 12 about the administration's approach to its allies and trade, said he agrees "that NAFTA needs renegotiating. I agree that the U.S. needs to step up with tough action against China’s abusive trade practices. But after a year and a half of work, the Trump Administration has managed to unite our traditional allies with China against us. In many ways, China is getting away with its cheating scot-free. Instead of creating American jobs, this trade policy is creating chaos," he said, according to prepared remarks.
BALTIMORE -- Trade policy under President Donald Trump is upending years of largely consistent approaches to U.S. trading partners, panelists said during the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference on June 8. While the panelists mostly agreed that the consequences of the tariff-centric approach is too harsh, some expressed sympathy with the administration's general reaction to globalization.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to raise tariffs on longtime allies because, in his view, they have ripped off America. But at a post-G-7 press conference, he laid out the consequence if they don't drop their tariffs to the same level as the U.S. "It's going to change. They have no choice. If it's not going to change, we're not going to trade with them," he said. He listed Canada, the European Union -- which he called "brutal" -- and India as offenders that could be barred from exporting to the U.S.
A bipartisan bill to end cash deposit collections on newsprint and that would delay antidumping and countervailing duty final determinations in those cases was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., and Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla. Both this bill and a version introduced in May in the Senate are called the PRINT Act, for Protecting Rational Incentives in Newsprint Trade Act of 2018. The top cash deposit rate on a company for the countervailing duty case is 9.93% (see 1801120008); most Canadian exports face a 22.16% antidumping cash deposit (see 1803160046).
If the Securing the International Mail Against Opioids Act of 2018 becomes law, the Government Accountability Office will evaluate how effective the use of advance electronic data has been in stopping the flow of fentanyl and other opioid packages, and it will assess "whether the detection of illicit synthetic opioids in the international mail would be improved by requiring the Postal Service to serve as the consignee for international mail shipments containing goods; or designating a customs broker to act as an importer of record for international mail shipments containing goods."
BALTIMORE -- There are some barriers to data sharing among NAFTA companies that would ease goods' flow across borders, but progress is steady, panelists said at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. Kim Campbell, founder of MKMarin, a Canadian trade services firm, said some of the problems with data sharing on Canadian exports is that Canada generally doesn't ask exporters to submit information if they're sending their goods to their southern neighbor. "We don’t actually collect export data into the United States," she said, and shipments from Canada to Mexico are often not tracked, either, because firms took advantage of the lack of reporting requirement for shipments south, as goods transited across the U.S.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, characterized a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as a good dialogue, but according to some media reports, Democrats who attended the June 7 meeting said Lighthizer did not provide a clear explanation of where the U.S. is in NAFTA talks or in the China trade dispute. "My message remains the same: our trade practices need to hit the right target which is China … not our allies, and certainly not Americans," Brady said in a statement issued after the meeting. "But the Administration’s recent actions don’t achieve that goal."
President Donald Trump blasted allies' trade practices just before heading to the G-7 summit in Canada in a tweet storm that included repeated swipes at Canadian dairy practices, European tariffs and trade deficits. "Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers," he said in one tweet, before closing with, "Look forward to seeing them tomorrow."