Market and geopolitical risk analysts said everything has gone wrong, undermining supply chain reliability over the last several years, and businesses are creating redundancy but are still anxious about the additional costs that entails.
Analysts from the Tax Foundation and from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that hiking tariffs on all imports by 10% would not boost domestic manufacturing, with CSIS's Bill Reinsch noting "you would be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks they make any sense."
Connecticut-based electronics manufacturer Hubbell Inc. accused freight forwarder DSV of violating U.S. shipping regulations by failing to provide the required service under a negotiated contract, Hubbell said in an Aug. 28 complaint to the Federal Maritime Commission. The manufacturer also accused DSV, headquartered in Denmark, of assessing $900,000 in overbilled or “improper” charges.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 21-27:
The U.S. government must take a host of actions to slow down Chinese "techno-economic dominance," including preventing Chinese firms from being listed on U.S. stock markets and limiting investment into China, Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said in an Aug. 28 post.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies expect the U.S. will get "a taste of its own medicine” when China appeals its loss over Section 232 retaliatory tariffs at the World Trade Organization, adding that China likely won't have to drop the tariffs since there is no appellate body to take that appeal.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, after meeting with China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, said the two countries will set up a commercial issues working group that will include both government officials and business representatives "to seek solutions on trade and investment issues and to advance U.S. commercial interests in China."
India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that he will "find a solution that addresses both countries' concerns" when it comes to India's new import licensing regime for technology imports. The new system is supposed to go into effect Nov. 1; U.S. technology companies have said it will hurt their exports to India (see 2308170028).
Taiwan is requiring a certificate of origin and customs approval before certain Chinese-origin chipmaking equipment can be shipped to the U.S. The requirement will apply to shipments of certain “machine tools operated by laser processes, of a kind used solely or principally for the manufacture of printed circuits, printed circuit assemblies, parts” or “parts of automatic data processing machines,” Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade announced this month.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is proposing changes to the exclusion process for Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs to improve the accuracy of exclusion requests and objections, and generally improve the efficiency of the process, the agency said.