Even if the Commerce Department finds that solar panels from Southeast Asia are circumventing antidumping and countervailing duty actions against Chinese exports, no AD/CVD will be collected for the next two years, the Biden administration announced on June 6. Trade lawyers were astonished by the action, which is based on the authority to temporarily suspend AD/CVD when imports are needed to respond to natural disasters "or other emergencies."
The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill along party lines the evening of June 2 that aims to improve gun safety and restrict the sale of ghost guns, bump stocks and large capacity magazines. The bill establishes "a new federal offense for the import, sale, manufacture, transfer, or possession of a large capacity magazines, with exceptions for certain law enforcement uses," the committee said.
A panel of industry, trade group representatives and a customs broker disagreed on the proper approach to changing domestic de minimis policy, or even if it should be changed, but agreed that it's perverse that warehouses in Canada and Mexico are serving as way stations for small packages destined for U.S. consumers.
The Federal Railroad Administration is going to spend $368 million across 46 projects, some of which are aimed at strengthening supply chains, it said. "Americans deserve a world-class rail system that allows people and goods to get where they need to go more quickly and affordably, while reducing traffic and pollution on our roads," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. "We're proud to award these grants to improve passenger rail for riders and strengthen the freight rail that makes our supply chains and our economy work."
A trade group that includes eBay, Etsy, Poshmark and Pinterest, called the Coalition to Protect America's Small Sellers (PASS), is arguing that the INFORM Act belongs in the China package, but the SHOP SAFE Act does not. "While INFORM and SHOP SAFE seem similar they both are very different pieces of legislation, and most importantly, have conflicting disclosure and verification requirements for sellers," the group wrote in a June 2 letter sent to the leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
A bipartisan bill was recently introduced that would codify the executive action on formula importation (see 2205260032) and which invites the administration to suspend tariffs on baby formula and formula ingredients.
A recent Congressional Research Service report on the phase one deal with China notes that there has been little discussion about how to enforce what China agreed to, and how to address issues that phase one didn't touch but were highlighted in the Section 301 report.
Mexico announced that it will examine whether the Panasonic Automotive Systems plant in Reynosa violated the rights of its workers (see 2205180061) under the provisions of the USMCA.
Four Republican senators, led by Roger Marshall of Kansas, asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai "to develop and begin executing a strategic plan for the long-term stability of fertilizer trade," because China, Russia and Belarus are unreliable trading partners for phosphates and potash. In a May 31 letter, the senators said the antidumping duties on Moroccan phosphates and the pending tariffs on urea ammonium nitrate from Trinidad and Tobago are only making the crunch worse. "Currently, 36% of the global tradable supply of phosphate fertilizers is not subject to U.S. duties," they wrote. "To believe these problems are only short-term is short-sighted. Even if the war in Ukraine would end tomorrow, our relations with Russia will take decades to heal and may never be the same. Western countries with fertilizer supply problems will be competing for fertilizer from 'friendly' countries."
The National Council of Textile Organizations is arguing that the yarn-forward rule for the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement must be retained, because it is driving what it calls "massive investment" in the countries in Central America. The letter it sent to Vice President Kamala Harris on May 31 is timed to her attendance at the Summit of the Americas, and recognizes her role to try to mitigate the poverty and corruption that leads Central Americans to migrate to the U.S. without visas.