Brady Says House Making Progress on Miscellaneous Tariff Bill
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the House Advisory Group on Negotiations talked about moving forward with negotiating a United Kingdom trade deal, World Trade Organization reforms, and renewing the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill. The HAGON includes Brady, Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., and three other Ways and Means members.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Brady, who was speaking to reporters Feb. 5, said that while there's bipartisan support for both GSP and MTB, he thinks the hurdles to renewing MTB are lower than with GSP. Last year, a number of members raised concerns about MTB, he said. Some had what he called “wholesale objections” to the bill, but others were concerned about one tariff elimination that they felt would impact a business in their district. “In those cases we try to get a member of Commerce together with the member of Congress whose district is impacted and see what’s going on,” he said, and try to determine if there's a way to work it out. “I hope we restart those conversations quickly because the clock is ticking,” he said. “My understanding is we’re making progress.”
Brady said that the group did not discuss the possibility of moving legislation to give Congress a greater voice on Section 232 tariffs, or legislation that would change how the threat to national security is assessed. In 2019, 32 House members, led by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., introduced such a bill (see 1902010028). Brady was not a co-sponsor, but 14 other Republicans were, in addition to Gallagher. “I think it’s a conversation worth having. The politics were very difficult in the middle of President Trump’s trade agenda,” he said, adding that he thinks this could be a good time to talk about the proposals, while President Joe Biden is considering how to handle the tariffs Trump imposed.