The title of the panel, "All Carrots and No Sticks: U.S. Climate Policy & Border Adjustment Mechanisms," revealed the main problem for a trade-rule compliant, administrable carbon border adjustment mechanism -- there is no national price on carbon in the U.S., and passing legislation to create one seems out of reach. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who participated in a panel hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the American Leadership Institute, said it's quite likely that in 10 years, all the major economic players, including China, could be ready to harmonize a price on carbon so that their manufacturers are on a level playing field. "I’m convinced this will happen over the course of the next decade but we don’t have time to wait for the next decade," he said.
The leader of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee focused on making it easier for domestic industry to win antidumping and countervailing duty cases and said that the de minimis statute needs to be altered, in a hearing designed to talk about how Chinese practices damage workers, businesses and the environment.
The National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill, hasn't gone to the Senate floor due to disagreement over an amendment to include the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the sponsor of that amendment, is the only reason the NDAA can't go to the floor.
The Trump administration's tariffs caused "a lot of damage to American consumers and business" and "we are no better off" after the phase one deal with China, House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said during a Dec. 2 roundtable with reporters. While not arguing that the Section 301 tariffs should be rolled back, he did say there should be an effort to "take them one by one and make some adjustments." He said there could be some Section 301 tariffs that could be changed without it being "politically toxic."
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said the $800 de minimis threshold amounts to a huge loophole, and he's going to propose major changes to the law. He said that millions of packages a day enter the U.S. under de minimis, and "nobody's monitoring it. We don't know what's forced labor, what has circumvented intellectual property, counterfeit goods, drugs. CBP's getting better, but who can monitor millions of packages a day?"
A customs modernization bill discussion draft released by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., last month (see 2111030035) is unlikely to progress in 2022, the senator said in a phone interview with International Trade Today. Although the request for feedback gave a deadline of Nov. 20, the office is still hearing from the trade. "Oh, we're getting feedback," Cassidy said with a chuckle.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said his INFORM Consumers Act, which would require e-commerce platforms to verify the identity of sellers of a certain size, could pass during this Congress, given that Amazon, the most prominent e-commerce player, has blessed the language in it. Cassidy, who spoke to International Trade Today in a phone interview, said that the fact that the House and Senate have identical language in the INFORM Act also would make it easier to get it through Congress. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is the other lead sponsor of the bill.
The author of the Trade Act of 2021, which was part of the Senate's China package, said that while the Senate and House "aren't even close to a conference yet," he hopes he will be on the conference committee, and that his legislation will be part of the compromise worked out between the two chambers.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Japan's trade minister and the European Union's trade commissioner said their staffs will be working to identify problems caused by non-market practices, to identify gaps in existing enforcement tools and to think about what work is needed to develop rules to address trade-distorting non-market practices. Japan, the EU and the U.S. will also discuss cooperating on using existing trade remedies. The three nations were supposed to have met on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization's 12th Ministerial Conference, but had to meet virtually because of its postponement (see 2111300028). Their joint statement also said that WTO reform is important.
Maria Pagan, the nominee to lead the U.S. mission at the World Trade Organization, told Senate Finance Committee members that reforming the appellate body is a top priority because "Appellate Body overreaching has shielded China’s non-market practices and hurt the interest of U.S. workers and businesses." She said that appellate body rulings "undermined our ability to protect U.S. workers and businesses from those non-market practices."