The top trade official from the EU, European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, said the incentives for the green transition in the Inflation Reduction Act appear to discriminate against automotive, battery, renewables and energy-intensive businesses operating in the EU. "It will not be easy to fix it -- but fix it we must," he said during an Oct. 31 speech at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Prague. He also said, "This is an issue of concern for many countries and businesses, which I have raised with our US partners over these past weeks, and it featured prominently in today's discussions."
The Coalition for a Prosperous America, a free-trade-skeptical advocacy group, criticized CBP for issuing a report that said the value of goods that entered under de minimis in the previous fiscal year was $39,876,651,152 (see 2210180031). The group's trade counsel, Charles Benoit, wrote on Oct. 26 that CBP never disclosed a dollar figure before "because CBP does not know the true value for any period of time. They do not know because the majority of de minimis shipments arrive via international mail, and most international mail shipments do not contain electronic data."
Advocates for more effective policing of counterfeit goods are hopeful that the inclusion of the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (Inform) for Consumers Act as an amendment to a must-pass defense bill will mean the proposal will become law before the end of the year.
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 electric vehicle consumer tax incentivesmake it harder for Europe and the U.S. to find agreement on how to measure the carbon intensity in traded steel, and box out steel that was produced through non-economic overcapacity, argued Jennifer Safavian, CEO of Autos Drive America. Her trade group represents foreign-owned automakers with American operations (other than the European company that makes Jeeps and Chryslers).
The U.S. and the EU created a U.S.-EU Task Force "to continue promoting deeper understanding of the [Inflation Reduction Act]’s meaningful progress on lowering costs for families, our shared climate goals, and opportunities and concerns for EU producers."
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will not initiate a Section 301 investigation on Mexican produce exports, it announced Oct. 23, at the deadline for the decision.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and one of the three Republicans vying to replace him after he retires, asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to "preserve all documents and communications in your custody relating to the Administration’s decision to agree to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS waiver) that was adopted on June 17, 2022."
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. David Trone, D-Md., both of whom serve on the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, complained that widespread waivers for Advanced Electronic Data for mail coming to the U.S. "undermine efforts to identify packages containing fentanyl or other illegal substances and stop them from entering the United States." Expanding AED to mail, not just express shipments, was central to the STOP Act.
The U.S. trade representative should reject the Florida congressional delegation's Section 301 petition regarding Mexican produce imports, argued Iowa's two senators, as well as Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.