A wide range of industries asked to be spared -- or protected -- in the first day of the International Trade Commission's public hearing that will hear from more than 120 companies, a major union, and trade groups, including those from China. The panel is tasked with refining the list of products subject to 25 percent tariffs, which accounted for $50 billion in imports last year. The size of the action was shaped by an estimate of the cost to U.S. companies of forced tech transfer, market access restrictions and intellectual property theft.
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.
Characterizing the seven-year ban on exports to Chinese telecom giant ZTE as "our initial thought," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said officials will examine alternative punishments. "We will be doing that very, very promptly," he said at a question-and-answer session with journalists. His remarks on May 14 came a day after President Donald Trump tweeted: "President Xi [Jinping] of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!"
A bipartisan bill led by Maine senators Susan Collins (R) and Angus King (D) calls for the end of cash deposit collections on newsprint and a stay to final determinations in the antidumping and countervailing duty cases. Both would be halted until after a study on the economics of newspapers and newsprint is concluded, and until President Donald Trump still certifies that antidumping and countervailing cases against Canadian groundwood paper exporters is in the national interest.
President Donald Trump's frequent trashing of NAFTA doesn't really matter when the principals sit around the table, as they did May 11, said Mexico's Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. "President Trump has been very consistent, even before entering politics, he has had that view," Guajardo said outside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. While he said Mexico, Canada and some in the U.S. believe the economic integration of North America has been positive, he explained: "That is not what we are negotiating. We are not negotiating views. We are negotiating realities. We do believe, and that is something we agree with President Trump, that trade agreements and public policy have to be aware of how you have distortions in the system. And you have to accommodate the public policy to help those that feel displaced for trade. In that sense, these are new times for policymakers."
Congress needs to be notified by May 17 of a deal for updating NAFTA in order to vote in the lame duck session, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said during a speech at the Ripon Society. "As the author of [Trade Promotion Authority], I can tell you we have to have the paper -- not just an agreement. We have to have the paper from USTR by May 17 for us to vote on it this year, in December, in the lame duck," he said on May 9. Ryan also alluded to the U.S. position on Canadian dairy protections, and his desire that Investor-State Dispute Settlement be retained in NAFTA 2.0.
Two pro-trade Democrats, a Freedom Caucus member and a retiring moderate Republican have banded together to introduce a bill meant to curtail executive power on trade proceedings. The bill would create a process similar to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to nullify recently completed rulemakings, for trade measures. "It’s time that Congress steps up to the plate, and uses the powers granted by our Constitution to collaboratively shape U.S. trade policy,” lead sponsor Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., said in a statement announcing the bill's introduction May 10.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, referring to press reports that the European Union may accept quotas on steel exports, told Senate appropriators on May 10, "I think there's a reasonable chance we'll work something out," while testifying about his department's budget. Ross also suggested Canada and Mexico should not be subject to quotas. Ross is handling the EU tariff exemption, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is handling Mexico and Canada as part of the NAFTA renegotiation. Canada and Mexico import nearly as much steel from the U.S. as they sell here, Ross said. "We literally don't have enough aluminum production in our country without the support of Canada," Ross said. "They have not been dumping." He said that Canada's low cost of aluminum production is because of inexpensive energy inputs.
Without calling out President Donald Trump by name, both Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Undersecretary of Agriculture for Trade Ted McKinney criticized his approach of describing trade with friends as them taking advantage of the U.S. and stealing its jobs and wealth (see 1803300013). Sasse, a longtime critic of Trump and ardent free-trader, said good neighbors see trade as positive. "If you understand trade is a win-win, you don't talk about it as a zero-sum game," he said. Washington is talking about trade deals as if they were real-estate transactions, which are zero-sum, while trade enriches both parties as they each produce more according to their comparative advantage, Sasse said. "NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for the U.S. and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Mexico and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Canada," he told an international conference May 8.
CBP will launch a two-to-four-week pilot program of blockchain technology this fall related to NAFTA and Central America Free Trade Agreement certificate of origin processes, a CBP spokesman said. NAFTA and CAFTA origin procedures were chosen for the pilot because it's an instance where CBP needs to reach further back into the supply chain than just the exporter and can "message multiple partners via blockchain at the same time." It was also appealing because it has a small, defined scope with potential for reducing paper processes, he said.
Echoing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that if a deal isn't reached in the next few weeks, NAFTA 2.0 won't be finished in 2018 -- but unlike the lead negotiator, Ross suggested there may be no revised agreement (see 1805010042). "If we don’t see progress soon, probably we won’t see it for quite a little while toward the end of the year, if at all," he said May 8 at an international conference.