The Uyghur Human Rights Project, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, is asking shoppers at Asian and international supermarkets to watch out for red dates coming from Xinjiang, and to report the presence of those goods to CBP, as they violate the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
A complaint from Rethink Trade and SNITIS, a Mexican labor union, submitted in early August alleging that the management of BBB Industries de Mexico in Reynosa, Mexico, conspired with a captive union to rig a contract vote was not pursued by the U.S. government, Reuters reported. Previously, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative asked Mexico to investigate five other complaints brought under USMCA's rapid response labor mechanism. Four of those complaints have been resolved, and one, against Manufacturas VU, an auto parts plant in Piedras Negras, is still pending. The agency told Reuters there was not "sufficient, credible evidence of a denial of rights," so that's why it didn't go forward. USTR didn't comment.
CARICOM, the economic-integration organization covering the Caribbean Community, with 15 member states, believes its Trade and Investment Forum Agreement with the U.S. has been underutilized, and trade experts are brainstorming about ways to change that trajectory.
A call between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU's top trade official, covered what the U.S. characterizes as "supply chain vulnerabilities," but the EU and U.S. readouts of the Sept. 1 call characterized the discussion differently.
An economist and a former assistant U.S. trade representative for trade policy and economics agreed that rolling back the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports would be modestly helpful to fight inflation, but that it wouldn't be noticeable to many consumers. Ed Gresser, the former assistant USTR now at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said that he thinks the administration's talk that the best way to refine the Trump-era tariffs is to roll back those on consumer goods is misguided. "The effect there has been to shift a lot of purchasing to Vietnam, a little bit to Mexico and a little bit to India," he said, so he doesn't think inflation would change much if those tariffs are dialed back. He said the more inflationary part of the tariffs is the 25% tariffs on industrial inputs.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that they do not want the World Trade Organization Appellate Body to be resurrected. The WTO no longer has binding dispute settlement, because members can appeal into the void if they do not like the results of a case in Geneva.
Large U.S. multinationals are more pessimistic about doing business in China than they have ever been, but it's not because they have come to expect the Section 301 tariffs will never go away. Rather, the annual U.S.-China Business Council membership survey found that lockdowns to control COVID-19 are the top problem for companies doing business in China, with 96% of respondents saying the lockdowns hurt their firms, and 48% saying that there was a severe negative impact.
As the Federal Maritime Commission considers reversing its rulemaking from 2018, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is arguing that unreasonable practices should continue to be subject to enforcement only if they are "normal, customary and continuous."
Some companies said in recently submitted comments they used to benefit from Section 232 tariffs but no longer do. Others said they previously were able to mitigate the cost impact of Section 301 tariffs through exclusions, finding other suppliers or other trade benefits but can't anymore.
Although the pandemic provided rocket fuel to an e-commerce counterfeit problem that was already massive, representatives of business groups said companies do not support mandatory data sharing from rights holders to solve the problem, and they said that making requirements of platforms has to be carefully done so as to not give giants like Amazon unfair advantages.