A lawyer who has represented clients whose goods were detained over suspicion of forced labor says the new document laying out the strategy on enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is not earth-shattering.
House Ways and Means Committee Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and ranking member Adrian Smith, R-Neb., are co-sponsors of a bill that would suspend tariffs on imported formula from Germany, Switzerland and England through Nov. 14.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and nine other Republicans told President Joe Biden that he made a mistake by temporarily preventing antidumping and countervailing duties from taking effect is if the Commerce Department determines they are warranted in an anti-circumvention inquiry on imported Asian solar panels.
The chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee highlighted in her opening remarks Congress' directive to the U.S. trade representative to establish an exclusion process for Section 301 tariffs. But when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., tried to ask USTR Katherine Tai about how her office is "working to comply with this directive," Tai evaded the question and talked about the deliberations in the administration on whether there should be a partial rollback of the tariffs on the vast majority of Chinese imports.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, in a bid to break the impasse in negotiations around the trade title in the China package, introduced a bill that would renew trade adjustment assistance and pass a limited trade promotion authority that could only be used for a free trade agreement with the U.K.
The published strategy to stop imports of goods with Xinjiang region content is lengthy, but it also shows how many blanks are left to be filled in. The rebuttable presumption that goods with a nexus to Xinjiang or Uyghur workers are banned took effect on June 21.
Trade ministers meeting at the World Trade Organization in Geneva agreed to a partial solution to harmful subsidies for fishing fleets, an intellectual property waiver for Covid vaccines, and to allow sale of commodities to the World Food Program even if the product is otherwise subject to export restrictions. The countries that attended the ministerial conference also agreed to extend the moratorium on tariffs on electronic transmissions.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said that he wants to get the conference negotiations done for the China package, because the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) has "some important trade aspects."
The National Council of Textile Organizations, the Narrow Fabrics Institute and the U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute told the administration in response comments that if 7.5% Section 301 tariffs on apparel are lifted, it could risk "reversing once-in-a-lifetime nearshoring trends."
The Alliance for American Manufacturing told the administration that it's "absurd" to blame Section 301 tariffs for inflation, given they started years before inflation began to rise. "U.S. consumers would see little to no benefit from tariff roll backs and any erosion of tariffs will benefit China’s Communist Party and China’s manufacturing sector, which would make up the difference by increasing its prices," the group wrote. It said that all tariffs should remain. "AAM strongly supports allowing USTR to continue its fact-based exclusion process without congressional mandates or any other political interference that predetermines an outcome. While an accessible and transparent exclusion process is essential for trade enforcement actions, unwarranted tariff relief may very well signal the demise of a U.S. company that is seeking to establish a market foothold or one that has reinvented itself to fill gaps in our domestic supply chains," it wrote.