The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, who will be one of the negotiators for the compromise China package, expressed pessimism that a version of the bill can be found that can get a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The Senate passed its version, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, with 67 votes; the House version, known as the Competes Act, only had one Republican on board.
House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., would also be open to lowering or lifting tariffs on at least some Ukrainian goods, he said during a hallway interview at the Capitol on April 28. Neal said he had just left a meeting with the president of Georgia, and she had told him the U.S. support for Ukraine needed to last. The U.K. has lifted tariffs on all Ukrainian imports, and the EU's parliament is considering doing the same.
Two Republicans and a Democrat introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would make all goods produced in either Latin America or the Caribbean duty free for 15 years, if that company was selected for a government-backed low-interest loan to move production from China to the new country. The bill, called the Western Hemisphere Nearshoring Act, was introduced April 26 by Reps. Mark Green, R-Tenn., Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-W.Va., and Albio Sires, D-N.J.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chairman of the board of Volkswagen to justify joint ventures with Chinese companies, arguing that they are involved in child forced labor in Congolese cobalt mines, and the destruction of rainforest habitat in Indonesia. He also referred to a two-year-old non-governmental organization's report that said Highbroad Advanced Material Co. accepts transferred Uyghur labor, and that the company sells to Volkswagen for its electronic displays, and said that the two companies that are now in joint ventures are also implicated in Uyghur forced labor. He said Huayou Cobalt and Tsingshan Holding Group "are implicated in grotesque human rights abuses." Rubio announced the letter on April 28 in a press release.
Among the 28 motions to instruct for negotiations that will be considered next Tuesday and Wednesday in the Senate, five would affect trade, including one that supports the establishment of an inspector general for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
A bill that establishes a working group to report on how the supply of palladium, neon gas, helium and hexafluorobutadiene 20 were disrupted by the war in Ukraine passed the House of Representatives 414-9 on April 27. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Reps. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., Dina Titus, D-Nev., and Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., is called the Protecting Semiconductor Supply Chain Materials from Authoritarians Act.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a senator who is opposed to the tariffs on imported solar panels that she cannot do much to speed up the anti-circumvention investigation on panels from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia (see 2204050052).
The Senate Finance Committee is talking about liberalizing trade with Ukraine, according to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who represents many Ukrainian-Americans in his state. He told International Trade Today at the Capitol on April 27 that the proposals being discussed might be broader than just lifting Section 232 tariffs on Ukrainian steel. Lifting 25% tariffs on Ukrainian steel was argued for by Senate Finance Committee member Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
While the treasury secretary has said before that some of the tariffs on Chinese goods hurt America more than they hurt China (see 2107190046), and the U.S. trade representative has defended them, the White House has now said that the administration's review of its China trade policy is taking inflation into account.
With negotiations expected to begin in earnest soon on the House and Senate's trade packages, staffers in both chambers of Congress say there could be support for antidumping and countervailing duty reform and language around Section 301 tariff exclusions, but the likelihood of a dramatic de minimis change seems somewhat remote.