A proposed bill to create a rebuttable presumption of forced labor for goods made in China's Xinjiang province never came up in a discussion on how to move forward in combating forced labor hosted by the McCain Institute. The April 30 webinar called "Eliminating Human Trafficking and Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains: whose responsibility is it?" instead talked about how consumer pressure could convince companies to do more due diligence beyond first tier suppliers.
Industry voices were united in telling the Commerce Department that its Information and Communications Technology and Services rule (see 2102190033) is so broad that it is practically unworkable and that it must narrow the scope of the rule. Many trade groups also said the rule should be put on hold until the pre-clearance or licensing process is established. In 18 comments, from trade groups, broader business groups and others, industry told the government that if there isn't either a carve-out or segmentation in how different imports are treated, compliance will be expensive, or even catastrophic, if pre-clearance reviews can't be done quickly.
The National Association of Beverage Importers is pleased that U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai chose to highlight the pause in tariffs between European countries and the U.S. over Airbus and Boeing subsidies, and believes her testimony in front of a Senate subcommittee on April 28 “is a very promising sign for successful settlement negotiations.” But NABI President Robert Tobiassen said his group is concerned that an announcement of a permanent solution to the dispute could come just two or three weeks before the temporary pause ends, which makes it hard for importers to know how to schedule shipments. They said another extension of the temporary pause now, even of just two more months, would be better.
Former U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization Dennis Shea says a planned discussion at the WTO about matters that affect trade in cotton “must examine the trade impact of the use of forced labor to pick cotton in China’s Xinjiang province.” Shea, who was writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is now an adjunct fellow, said “ignoring what is happening in Xinjiang would be tantamount to the WTO holding a meeting on global public health and trade without mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic. ... The use of forced labor in the province has likely depressed the global price of cotton, adversely impacted other cotton-exporting nations (particularly those in the developing world) and improperly distorted global trade flows,” and may even be a countervailable subsidy. Shea said the U.S. should raise the issue during the late May meeting.
Celeste Drake, who often opposed trade agreements in her eight years leading trade and globalization policy at the AFL-CIO, was named Made in America director, a new job at the Office of Management and Budget. Most recently, she was a top lobbyist at the Directors Guild of America. The Biden administration said Drake “will shape and implement Federal procurement and financial management policy to help carry out the President’s vision of a future made in all of America by all of America’s workers -- including minority entrepreneurs and small businesses in every region in our country.”
Even as the U.S. and the European Union work privately to resolve their differences over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, a U.S. representative at the World Trade Organization complained that the EU provided no status update on coming into compliance over Airbus subsidies. The EU said that the measures it took in August 2020 (see 2008280051) were more than enough to comply with a WTO ruling, according to a Geneva trade official.
Two Democrats and two Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, along with 98 colleagues, are asking the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to re-establish an application process for exclusions to Section 301 tariffs. In an April 27 letter, led by Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., and Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., they also say they believe companies that had exclusions that have expired should have expedited procedures for getting a new exclusion.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard many bipartisan complaints about the pain of both Section 301 tariffs and Europe's retaliatory tariffs in response to steel tariffs, but stood her ground on both during a hearing in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
At a webinar on U.S.-Vietnam economic relations, Ambassador Ha Kim Ngoc said Vietnam is working to narrow the trade deficit with the U.S., whether by buying more American agricultural exports or encouraging Vietnamese businesses to open factories in the U.S. "I don’t think we can solve the problem overnight, with COVID-19 and the increased demand of the goods from Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam," he said April 27.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has been cautioning its clients not to get their hopes up about a reversal of sections 232 and 301 tariffs with the new administration, and Scott McCandless, a principal in the firm's tax policy services group, also sought to manage expectations for trade policy action in Congress in 2021. McCandless, speaking to a webinar audience April 27, said that while forced labor is a hot issue right now, and CBP “is on a more active footing” on forced labor, he doesn't believe that legislation that would create a rebuttable presumption of forced labor in Xinjiang is going to pass this year. “I doubt that moves forward,” he said.