President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two hours, underscoring “his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices,” as well as human rights abuses in Xinjiang, according to a White House readout of the Feb. 10 call. In comments to reporters Feb. 11, he said it was a “good conversation.”
American Association of Exporters and Importers CEO Marianne Rowden believes automation is going to replace a lot of tariff classification work over the coming years. “Will human beings be doing tariff classification in the next three to five years? I don't think so -- I think it’s all going to be done by machine,” Rowden told a National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones online conference Feb. 9. She also predicted that the moratorium on customs duties on digital transactions, such as downloads of games or movies, will end in the medium term. “Every two years there is a vote at the World Trade Organization on the moratorium on customs duties on digital transmissions,” she said. “I think we’re going to lose that vote probably within the next five to six years because governments, particularly developing countries, are so desperate for revenue.”
Labor and civil society representatives, along with a former Democratic House Ways and Means Committee staffer, said dramatic changes are needed in the trading system, not just tweaks, to make trade a force for good in the world.
The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, which includes a number of machining trade groups, a construction trade group and others, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden Feb. 10 to ask him to lift Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. “The Trump steel tariffs have hurt small, family-owned manufacturers and the communities in which they built their businesses, while fracturing relations with overseas trading partners and spurring a frenzy of retaliatory trade measures -- with little to nothing to show for it at home,” the letter said. The coalition represents more than 30,000 companies in manufacturing and downstream supply chains. “More than 6.2 million Americans work in industries that use steel, while the steel industry itself directly employs only 140,000 workers,” it said, referring to tallies before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The data on employment in steel and aluminum production shows a muted benefit of approximately 1,000 more jobs. By comparison, a study by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors indicated that increased input costs due to the tariffs are associated with 75,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector.”
President Donald Trump didn't get China to agree to much in the way of structural changes, panelists said, but Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler said he put China front and center on the agenda, which was good. “He was really willing to take on the business community when it came to China,” she said. Cutler, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for more than 25 years, said that when she was at USTR, one of her frustrations in trying to negotiate with China was that U.S. “companies were pretty conflicted. They liked the … money they were making. They wanted us to be quote, unquote tough with China, but they didn’t want to be part of the get-tough strategy. Our hands were tied in a way.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., told an online audience Feb. 9 during a Washington International Trade Association conference that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program will be restored this year, and that the benefits will be retroactive. He added, “I think that for all of its past successes, and I have been a supporter, it needs to be updated to keep us in line with progress as it relates to trade policy.”
The Biden administration announced a slew of appointments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that do not require Senate confirmation, allowing the agency to get its agenda underway as U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai awaits a hearing and a floor vote.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced the U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 to establish normal trade relations. “Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s. To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership,” he said in a Feb. 5 press release. The U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 would repeal the Helms-Burton Act and the Cuban Democracy Act, and other provisions that affect trade, investment and travel with Cuba. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., are cosponsors of the bill. Members of Congress have been introducing bills to lift the embargo for more than 10 years.
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.
More than 12.7 million counterfeit face masks were seized by CBP during fiscal year 2020, part of more than 950 seizures of either FDA-prohibited drugs or test kits, or counterfeit or fraudulent products aimed at fighting COVID-19, the agency said in its annual fiscal year report, released Feb. 4. About 51% came from China; 24% were discovered in the mail; and 53% were sent by express couriers. For general intellectual property seizures, 90% were in either international mail or express shipments.