Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is asking why tariffs on aluminum seem to be permanent fixtures at the same time that there's a pause on potential anti-circumvention duties on Southeast Asian solar panels.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Oct. 3-9 and Oct. 10-16:
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the leading voices in the Senate for free trade, was unable to get changes to the Section 232 statute into the must-pass defense bill that will be taken up during the lame duck session of Congress.
The 75 amendments that will be voted on as a package with the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act include the INFORM Consumers Act, a piece of legislation that shifts more responsibility to online marketplaces to root out counterfeit goods.
More than a dozen amendments involving trade have been proposed for the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill the Senate passes every year, and is expected to take up in a lame-duck session after the November election.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
China dominates in rare-earths magnet production, which is a threat to U.S. national security, the Commerce Department concluded, but the president will not be authorizing tariffs to bolster a nascent domestic rare-earths magnet industry.
A group of domestic steel manufacturers doesn't have the right to intervene in a spate of challenges to denied requests for exclusions from Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a Sept. 8 opinion. Ruling against the Court of International Trade's opinion that the would-be intervenors did not establish standing, Judges Kimberly Moore and Todd Hughes ultimately found that the interveners nevertheless failed to identify a legally protectable interest to qualify as intervenors under the trade court's rules.
An economist and a former assistant U.S. trade representative for trade policy and economics agreed that rolling back the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports would be modestly helpful to fight inflation, but that it wouldn't be noticeable to many consumers. Ed Gresser, the former assistant USTR now at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said that he thinks the administration's talk that the best way to refine the Trump-era tariffs is to roll back those on consumer goods is misguided. "The effect there has been to shift a lot of purchasing to Vietnam, a little bit to Mexico and a little bit to India," he said, so he doesn't think inflation would change much if those tariffs are dialed back. He said the more inflationary part of the tariffs is the 25% tariffs on industrial inputs.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Aug. 15-21 and 22-28: