The Aluminum Association urged U.S. officials to sign a trade agreement with China and to hold the country accountable for its “unfair trading practices,” the association said in a Feb. 8 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The letter, signed by CEO Heidi Brock, said the U.S. aluminum industry has suffered from China’s “pervasive subsidies” to its own aluminum industry. In particular, she said, the Chinese government has boosted domestic aluminum production and created overcapacity. Mnuchin and Lighthizer were urged to come to a “government-to-government agreement” with China on that aluminum overcapacity that would give “long-term certainty to the industry.” She said: “These important negotiations could lead to policy changes that result in measurable and verifiable reductions in Chinese aluminum capacity in both the upstream and downstream segments of the value chain.”
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security seeks comments on its proposed information collection that is part of the procedure for submitting rebuttals and surrebuttals for requests for exclusion from the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, Commerce said in a Feb. 11 notice. In September, BIS produced an interim final rule that made changes to the process for submitting exclusion requests for the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs (see 1809060035). That rule lets BIS allow for a rebuttal period for responses to objections, as well as a surrebuttal period for objectors to respond to rebuttals. Now BIS is seeking comments on the information collection proposal that it will submit to the Office of Management and Budget for clearance. Comments are due March 13.
Republican senators have been saying they don't know how the new NAFTA can be approved (see 1901310038) and the House Trade Subcommittee chairman tweeted that there's a lot of work needed before his committee would vote for it or it could pass the house. One observer said it would be a "lovely miracle" if the deal were ratified this year (see 1901290028).
Drawback filers may “effective immediately” submit claims for refunds on Section 301 or Section 201 duties, CBP said in a Feb. 8 CSMS message. Filers will no longer receive error messages related to unit of measure (UOM) mismatches that had been occurring “because the underlying import did not have a UOM associated to a Chapter 99” tariff number or because they had left the mandatory UOM field blank, CBP said.
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security seeks comments on its proposed information collection that is part of the procedure for submitting objections to requested exclusions from the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, Commerce said in a Feb. 7 notice. Last September, BIS produced an interim final rule that made changes to the process for requesting exclusions from Section 232 tariffs and quotas on steel and aluminum products (see 1809060035). BIS is now seeking comments and recommendations on the information collection proposal that it has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for clearance. Comments are due March 11.
Tariffs on allies make it harder to convince China to change its abuses, senators said, as members from both parties held a press conference to criticize Trump administration tariff policies. They were kicking off a lobbying effort from business owners and farmers around the country called Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, which began Feb. 6.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a former U.S. trade representative, reintroduced his bill that would allow Congress to overrule the president on future Section 232 tariff actions, and make changes to the investigations that lead to those tariffs.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Jan. 28 - Feb. 1 in case they were missed.
A domestic trade association filed petitions on Feb. 1 with the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission requesting new antidumping and countervailing duties on fabricated structural steel from Canada, Mexico and China. Commerce will now decide whether to begin AD/CVD investigations on fabricated structural steel that could eventually result in the assessment of AD/CV duties. The petition, filed by the American Institute of Steel Construction, targets steel mill products of various shapes that have been fabricated (and typically custom-manufactured) into articles suitable for erection or assembly into a variety of structures.
The Mercatus Center, a free market-oriented research organization at George Mason University, continues to be critical of the Section 232 steel and aluminum exclusion process. In an update published Jan. 28, Christine McDaniel and Danielle Parks wrote that more than half of requests are still pending, and that 76 percent of requests have taken longer than the expected 90 days to get a decision. The Commerce Department originally projected it could decide on exclusions within 90 days. Overall, of steel requests that have received rulings, just over 75 percent have been approved, according to the Mercatus analysis. The analysis says that for companies requesting exclusions, Japan is the most frequent source of the steel, representing 18 percent of the requests filed before the partial federal government shutdown. Spain was No. 2, with just over 12 percent of requests, and China was third, with 12 percent of requests. For aluminum, Canada represents 13.6 percent of the requests, and India, 12.95 percent of the requests.