Twenty-two of Florida's 27-member House delegation, led by Democrat Rep. Darren Soto and Republican Rep. Bill Posey, told acting U.S. Trade Representative Maria Pagan that the European Union's 25% tariffs on grapefruit has hurt their constituents. “With the addition of a twenty-five percent retaliatory tariff on top of the existing 1.5 percent tariff, grapefruit exports from Florida have shrunk significantly,” their Feb. 5 letter said. Forty percent of Florida's fresh grapefruit production typically goes to the EU, the representatives said. Soto announced the letter in a news release Feb. 10. “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida growers have already been struggling to maintain their livelihoods. If immediate action is not taken and the United States loses the fresh grapefruit market in the EU, they could face even harsher consequences,” the letter said. EU officials have said they would be willing to lift the tariffs in the Boeing dispute for six months while the U.S. and the EU try to reach a settlement on aircraft subsidies.
Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Angus King, I-Maine, introduced a bill that would create a national standard for Made in USA labeling. Congress has tried previously to supersede state laws, with a 2016 bill (see 1607140068) making it through the House Energy and Commerce Committee but not reaching a vote on the floor. “Unfortunately, some states have made it unnecessarily difficult for businesses to use the ‘Made in USA’ label and empowered trial lawyers to get rich through differing labeling standards,” Lee said in a Feb. 10 news release. “This bill solves that problem by making one national standard for the ‘Made in USA’ label.” The senators say one state has a rigid 100% threshold and a complicated country of origin standard. They did not name the state, but California has its own Made in USA standard.
President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two hours, underscoring “his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices,” as well as human rights abuses in Xinjiang, according to a White House readout of the Feb. 10 call. In comments to reporters Feb. 11, he said it was a “good conversation.”
American Association of Exporters and Importers CEO Marianne Rowden believes automation is going to replace a lot of tariff classification work over the coming years. “Will human beings be doing tariff classification in the next three to five years? I don't think so -- I think it’s all going to be done by machine,” Rowden told a National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones online conference Feb. 9. She also predicted that the moratorium on customs duties on digital transactions, such as downloads of games or movies, will end in the medium term. “Every two years there is a vote at the World Trade Organization on the moratorium on customs duties on digital transmissions,” she said. “I think we’re going to lose that vote probably within the next five to six years because governments, particularly developing countries, are so desperate for revenue.”
Labor and civil society representatives, along with a former Democratic House Ways and Means Committee staffer, said dramatic changes are needed in the trading system, not just tweaks, to make trade a force for good in the world.
The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, which includes a number of machining trade groups, a construction trade group and others, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden Feb. 10 to ask him to lift Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. “The Trump steel tariffs have hurt small, family-owned manufacturers and the communities in which they built their businesses, while fracturing relations with overseas trading partners and spurring a frenzy of retaliatory trade measures -- with little to nothing to show for it at home,” the letter said. The coalition represents more than 30,000 companies in manufacturing and downstream supply chains. “More than 6.2 million Americans work in industries that use steel, while the steel industry itself directly employs only 140,000 workers,” it said, referring to tallies before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The data on employment in steel and aluminum production shows a muted benefit of approximately 1,000 more jobs. By comparison, a study by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors indicated that increased input costs due to the tariffs are associated with 75,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector.”
President Donald Trump didn't get China to agree to much in the way of structural changes, panelists said, but Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler said he put China front and center on the agenda, which was good. “He was really willing to take on the business community when it came to China,” she said. Cutler, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for more than 25 years, said that when she was at USTR, one of her frustrations in trying to negotiate with China was that U.S. “companies were pretty conflicted. They liked the … money they were making. They wanted us to be quote, unquote tough with China, but they didn’t want to be part of the get-tough strategy. Our hands were tied in a way.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., told an online audience Feb. 9 during a Washington International Trade Association conference that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program will be restored this year, and that the benefits will be retroactive. He added, “I think that for all of its past successes, and I have been a supporter, it needs to be updated to keep us in line with progress as it relates to trade policy.”
The Biden administration announced a slew of appointments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that do not require Senate confirmation, allowing the agency to get its agenda underway as U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai awaits a hearing and a floor vote.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced the U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 to establish normal trade relations. “Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s. To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership,” he said in a Feb. 5 press release. The U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 would repeal the Helms-Burton Act and the Cuban Democracy Act, and other provisions that affect trade, investment and travel with Cuba. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., are cosponsors of the bill. Members of Congress have been introducing bills to lift the embargo for more than 10 years.