Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, introduced a bill June 8 that would require a congressional vote before the U.S. could agree at the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines, a process known as a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement waiver. The bill, H.R. 3788, “pushes back against the Biden Administration’s effort to surrender expensive American medical technology to foreign competitors,” Nunes said in a news release. “The Biden Administration’s support for surrendering intellectual property protections for American-made COVID-19 vaccines serves only to harm Americans and help hostile foreign powers like Communist China. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a more self-defeating or unjust policy.”
The U.S. activated the rapid response mechanism under USMCA for the second time, as U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh agreed with the AFL-CIO and other petitioners that there is “sufficient credible evidence” that Tridonex workers at an auto parts factory in Matamoros are being denied free association and collective bargaining rights.
CBP told lawmakers in February that it planned to take enforcement action over imports of polysilicon products from China related to forced labor, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee said in a June 10 letter they sent to CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller. They chided him for not taking action against polysilicon products made in the Xinjiang province of China. Polysilicon, which is used in solar panels, has been mentioned as a CBP possible target in recent months (see 2104260059).
Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., reintroduced a bill directing the administration to establish a task force to identify potential countervailable subsidies, dumping and circumvention with respect to trade, and to forward its findings to the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration so that antidumping or countervailing cases can be self-initiated, or anti-circumvention investigations can be opened. A similar bill was introduced in 2019 and 2018 (see 1903050025). The bill's text was published June 8.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., one of the House stalwarts for trade in the Democratic party, along with Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., another trade moderate, and fellow Washington delegation member and Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, are asking that Canadian solar modules be exempted from the solar safeguard tariff and that a more generous tariff rate quota on solar cells be implemented.
At a White House press briefing, National Economic Council Deputy Director Sameera Fazili said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will lead a Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force "to tackle near-term bottlenecks in the semiconductor, homebuilding and construction, transportation, and agricultural and food industries."
The China package once known as the Endless Frontier Act passed the Senate with 68 votes. The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act includes a trade amendment that authorizes a new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, restarts applications for Section 301 tariff exclusions, adds an inspector general to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, renews the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program for more than five years and directs the CBP to increase inspections of imports with the aim of finding counterfeits. The bill passed the evening of June 8.
The European Union's ambassador to the U.S. said that as the world watches the European Union-U.S. summit in a week, they will be looking to see that “we are capable of resolving quickly and effectively our bilateral trade irritants.” He said they also want to see “that we can work and will work together to address the new challenges that sit on the nexus of technology and trade and security.” He said that export controls and cyber security measures are some of the ways to address those challenges, and there should be an announcement at the conference on those matters.
The administration issued a lengthy report after a 100-day review of supply chain vulnerabilities that recommends a lot of reshoring of manufacturing, in semiconductors, critical minerals and pharmaceutical ingredients, but also suggests a "trade strike force" to be deployed against unfair foreign trade practices that have hurt domestic companies that contribute to critical supply chains.
A Japanese and a Korean economist said that trade tensions between their two countries are no longer really disrupting Korea's semiconductor industry, though they are still increasing costs for some of the Japanese exporters.