Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and two colleagues introduced a bill that would extend normal trade relations for exports from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Although Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are members of the World Trade Organization, they still have temporary normal trade relations with the U.S. The countries have had temporary NTR since the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union broke up.
A report from Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress said that while the Federal Reserve is doing the right thing to drive down inflation, Congress should act to remove Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, and Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. "These 2018-2020 era tariffs are currently in effect on $280 billion of U.S. imports, imposing a $50 billion annual cost burden on U.S. producers and consumers that use imported goods. Estimates suggest that removing recently imposed tariffs on imports from China, steel and aluminum imports, and Canadian lumber imports could deliver a one-time inflation reduction of 1.3 percentage point," the report said. There is no mechanism for Congress to roll back the softwood lumber duties, as they are antidumping and countervailing duties. However, the U.S. used to lower the trade remedies when the cost of lumber rose above certain thresholds.
House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to consider doing an out-of-cycle review on Ethiopia's eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act preferences program. Ethiopia lost its eligibility at the beginning of 2022 (see 2111020035) because the U.S. said its government was violating human rights as it tried to quell a rebellion in the Tigray region. Ethiopia was exporting more than $100 million annually of apparel and textiles to the U.S. before it was ousted from AGOA.
The National Milk Producers Federation told the chairmen and ranking Republicans on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees that they do not support an extension of tariff waivers on either imported baby formula or the inputs to make formula.
Solar developers, installers, manufacturers, and solar array accessory providers are asking Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to reject claims that solar panels made in Southeast Asia are really of Chinese origin, and therefore, are circumventing antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese solar panel exports.
The Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (Inform) Consumers Act passed the House Nov. 17, making it more likely the bill could become law during the lame duck session. The Inform Consumers Act requires high-volume third-party sellers on e-commerce platforms to disclose their names and a way to contact them. A high-volume seller is defined as someone who has made 200 or more sales in a 12-month period, worth $5,000 or more. It also requires companies like Amazon or e-Bay to create a hotline to allow customers to report postings they believe to be stolen or counterfeit goods.
If the U.S. position on calculating the regional content of automobiles prevails in a USMCA state-to-state dispute, Baker McKenzie associate Eunkyung Kim Shin predicted, companies would be likely to import more parts used to assemble the automobiles. Shin, who spoke at a Baker McKenzie webinar Nov. 15, said that when the entire value of a part counts toward the vehicle regional content threshold once that part meets its own rule of origin, it makes sense to build the part in Mexico, the U.S. or Canada. But if the non-local content of those parts is not disregarded when doing vehicle-level calculations, it might be cheaper just to import the parts from a lower-cost country, she said.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., whose party is all but certain to lose the majority in January, is still firm that what's holding up the renewal of two small tariff-cutting bills is Republican refusal to renew Trade Adjustment Assistance. The program, which offers retraining and extended unemployment for workers whose jobs were eliminated due to foreign competition, can no longer accept new applicants since it expired in July.
With the expected shift to a Republican majority in the House -- and the retirement from Congress of former Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady -- Republicans will have three choices to lead the powerful committee.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that if China has not complied with its World Trade Organization accession provisions, Congress should pass a law "to immediately suspend China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations" treatment, which would mean that Chinese imports would face higher base tariffs than from nearly all other countries. Then Congress should assess what conditions it would require to renew Chinese imports' eligibility for Most Favored Nation Tariffs, the commission said in its annual report, released Nov. 15.