Five Republican House members told Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in an Oct. 23 letter that the importation of electrical transformers and transformer cores is not a national security issue, and that the increase in imports of the goods from Canada and Mexico is a logical consequence of putting 25% tariffs on the steel used to make these goods. The letter, led by Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Va., said that adding Section 232 tariffs could put 15,000 transformer industry jobs at risk. Riggleman was defeated in his primary. Reps. Benjamin Cline and Morgan Griffith, both of Virginia; Dan Bishop of North Carolina; and Bruce Westerman of Arkansas also signed.
FBB Federal Relations partner Ray Bucheger told members of the Pacific Coast Council of Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Associations that while the message on the Hill is discouraging on extending current Section 301 exclusions, his firm is working on legislation for the companies that received exclusions too late to get refunds for the tariffs paid.
Talks toward a comprehensive trade agreement with the United Kingdom would likely continue under a Joe Biden administration, though when a deal could be reached is unclear, K&L Gates partner Stacy Ettinger said during a webinar on how trade policy would change if there is an administration change after the election, or progress if there is a second Trump administration. Ettinger, a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., before joining the private sector, was joined by former White House trade staffer Clete Willems, now at Akin Gump, during a webinar Oct. 20 hosted by American University's law school.
The revision of the Customs chapter in U.S. Code Title 19, originally scheduled for next spring, will be delayed, the Office of the Law Revision Counsel said Oct. 19.
Duties continue to be collected under the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum from Canada, despite a September Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announcement that the tariffs would end. Lauren Wilk, Aluminum Association vice president for policy and international trade, said Oct. 22 that a presidential proclamation or executive order rolling back the tariffs never came.
An economist in Europe and one in the U.S. say policymakers talking about the vulnerabilities of supply chains are drawing the wrong conclusions from the shortages of personal protective equipment, but while they say policy decisions should be fact-based, it's not clear that procurement professionals can influence the politicians. Simon Evenett, an international trade professor at Switzerland's University of St. Gallen, said during a Peterson Institute for International Economics program that in most medical goods and medicines, China is not the largest supplier, though it is for PPE.
One of the two finalists for the director-general position at the World Trade Organization said Oct. 20 that when trade ministers gather for the next ministerial -- which may happen in June next year -- they should agree on a process for reforming the dispute settlement system. That suggests there will be no binding dispute resolution for at least two years at the WTO, if not longer.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the trade facilitation agreement that the U.S. and Brazil signed Oct. 19 is very similar to the USMCA trade facilitation chapter, and that traders should expect more incremental progress in coming months. “There’s a lot more that needs to be done,” Lighthizer said during a U.S. Chamber of Commerce program Oct. 20. “We have ongoing negotiations on ethanol. Brazilians like to talk about sugar. There’s a variety of things in the agriculture area.”
People are realizing they can no longer count on global supply chains operating relatively free of political interference, according to a think tank official who studies the global economy. “That said, it’s not so easy to change global supply chains,” said Homi Kharas, deputy director for the Global Economy and Development program at the centrist Brookings Institution. Kharas, who was speaking on a Brookings webinar Oct. 19, “Global China: Assessing Beijing’s growing influence in the international system,” said there's still an enormous amount of trade between the U.S. and China.
A former U.S. ambassador to the European Union and the German envoy to the U.S. said a united front on China's trade distortions could make it more painful for that country to continue its current industrial policies. “With the rise of China and the relative decline of Western power it should be in our shared interest to use each other as an asset to leverage our power,” said Emily Haber, Germany's ambassador.