Imports from Haiti and the 16 Caribbean countries and U.S. territories covered by the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act declined 8.9% in 2020 from 2019, after a 8.2% decline from 2018 to 2019, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reported. In 2020, the countries collectively exported $5.1 billion in goods to the U.S. -- behind faraway Slovakia. These imports represent only .2% of imports in 2020. The USTR attributed the decline to COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission used to hear critiques that it was too negative about China, too focused on threats from what is now the world's second-largest economy. "There were a lot of people who thought we were outliers," said Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew, who once served as Rep. Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff, before the California Democrat became speaker of the House. "We are not outliers anymore. And that’s not because the commission’s views have changed. The entire debate has shifted."
Both the bipartisan Senate and the Democratic versions of a Generalized System of Preferences benefits program renewal try to make the program do too much, says a think tank author who helped to administer GSP when he was assistant U.S. trade representative for trade policy and economics. GSP covers 3,500 of 6,900 tariff lines that are above 0, he noted, but it still covers only 11% of exports to the U.S. from GSP countries because of the categories that are excluded.
Six Democratic and two Republican senators are asking President Joe Biden to overrule the International Trade Commission and allow the safeguard tariffs on solar panels and cells to lapse in February, as they were originally scheduled to do. Three Republican and two Democratic senators are asking the president to retain the tariffs for another four years, and to restore tariffs on bifacial solar panels, which were collected for about a year, until the Court of International Trade said applying tariffs to bifacial solar panels after they were originally excluded was unlawful. That decision, from November (see 2111160032), is being appealed.
Almost a third of House members are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to reopen exclusion applications to all importers of Chinese goods subject to Section 301 tariffs. Roughly $250 billion worth of Chinese imports annually are subject to an additional 25% tariff under Section 301; another $112 billion worth of imports are subject to an additional 7.5% tariff.
President Joe Biden, during a news conference at the end of his first year in office, said he hopes to eventually end the tariffs on goods from China, but it remains unclear when that might happen. Asked about his tools to fight inflation and whether it's time to end the tariffs on goods from China, Biden said he knows that business groups are asking for them to be removed, at least in part. "That’s why my trade rep is working on that right now," he said Jan. 19. "The answer is uncertain. It’s uncertain. I’d like to be able to be in a position where I can say they’re meeting the commitments, or more of their commitments, and be able to lift some of it. But we’re not there yet."
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Earl Blumenauer said Congress would never have raised the minimis level to $800 if it had known how many products would be sold through e-commerce channels from China and shipped directly to customers. "It was never intended to be anything like this, and not only are they evading payment of duty, but they are escaping any sort of meaningful oversight," he said in a phone interview from Oregon with International Trade Today. "And as you know, we're deeply concerned about forced labor."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the International Trade Commission to analyze the results of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, including which participating countries export the most, both commodities and value-added products, and identifying tariff-eligible products where the preference was not claimed, as well as imports of products not covered by the program. Neal asked the ITC to identify countries and sectors that are heavy users of AGOA, and that do not use AGOA much "and broad factors that explain this."
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, said he knows that Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., is sincere in his concern that the more generous de minimis threshold since 2016 has had unintended consequences. Blumenauer was one of just 24 House Democrats who supported the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act that raised the threshold to $800. Blumenauer introduced a bill (see 2201180053) that would bar importers of Chinese goods from using de minimis, and would also end the ability to send exports to Canada and Mexico to wait in warehouses until a U.S. buyer makes an online purchase.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials that lead the group's international policy initiatives said again that the U.S. is wasting an opportunity by letting trade negotiations stall. The vice presidents in charge of Africa, Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Asia policy spoke on a Jan. 18 webinar that was a follow-up to the State of American Business program.