The Timber Working Group, a structure established in 2021 instead of tariffs after a Section 301 investigation on Vietnamese trading practices, discussed how Vietnam is keeping confiscated timber out of the commercial supply chain, how Vietnam verifies the legality of domestically harvested timber, and how Vietnam is "working with high-risk source countries to improve customs enforcement at the border and law enforcement collaboration."
Vanity mirrors with speaker and a charging port or wireless charging pad are still classifiable in the tariff schedule as mirrors, CBP said in a recent ruling, denying an importer's protest for one entry but granting it for two others on the basis that the underlying entries were untimely reliquidated.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president for international policy said that when the trade ministers for the G-20 nations meet in India later this week, they should pledge not to hike tariffs, impose new export restraints or add digital trade barriers.
The U.S. is asking that a rapid response labor mechanism panel decide whether Grupo Mexico's decision to hire replacement workers after a strike is a violation of union rights covered by the USMCA. The treaty says that the panel must be formed in three days after a request, and that the panel has 30 days to make a determination. This is the first time Mexico and the U.S. have disagreed on remediation after the U.S. filed a rapid response labor complaint, and the first time the U.S. called for a panel.
Former President Donald Trump is considering making hiking tariffs on all imports a plank of his reelection campaign, as he discussed recently on Fox Business. According to a Washington Post story, although Trump said on TV that he liked the idea of a 10% duty on all imports, he has not settled on a number yet. Trump's former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in January 2021 that all countries should have a 10% to 12% tariff on all imports, with higher tariffs for particularly important products (see 2101260048).
An expert on China's electric vehicle manufacturing praised the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives to build U.S. advanced battery manufacturing capacity but told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that completely cutting China out of that sector's supply chain is impractical. The Zero Emissions Transportation Association has made similar arguments (see 2208040045); the Treasury Department has not yet said how the "country of concern" restrictions for EV tax credits will be applied. However, Treasury allows leased cars to avoid all the localization rules.
Mexico raised tariffs for imports of steel and other items from non-free trade agreement countries, the country announced Aug 16, according to an unofficial translation. The increased tariffs -- which could subject certain products to duties "of up to 25%," the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said -- will apply to merchandise from certain “strategic industries,” including steel, textiles, clothing, footwear, aluminum, tires, plastics, glass and ceramics.
The Agricultural Marketing Service is amending the Cotton Board Rules and Regulations to increase the value assigned to imported cotton for the purposes of calculating supplemental assessments on imports collected under the Cotton Research and Promotion Program, it said in a direct final rule Aug. 15. The revised value is 1.4691 cent per kilogram, an increase of .1476 cent per kilogram. The increase reflects a rise in the average price of upland cotton received by U.S. farmers during the period January through December 2022. AMS's notice also includes a table of adjusted assessments corresponding to each Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading for which they are due. The changes take effect Oct. 16, unless significant adverse comments are received by Sept. 14.
The Court of International Trade in an Aug. 17 opinion appeared to leave the door open for the government to collect additional duties in court cases filed by importers challenging denied protests. In the latest in a series of recently issued decisions finding the government can't file counterclaims in denied protest cases, Judge Gary Katzmann reclassified a government counterclaim as a defense, but said importer Second Nature Designs may be liable for more duties if that defense prevails.
A World Trade Organization dispute panel rejected China's claim that its retaliatory tariffs in response to Section 232 tariffs were justified because the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs were a safeguard in disguise.