European Union Director General for Trade Sabine Weyand said the EU has made another offer to settle the Boeing-Airbus dispute. “There's a lot we need to do to calm down the tensions in our relationship,” she said during a Sept. 15 webinar hosted by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She pointed to the deal on lobster tariffs as good but small. “It's the first tariff liberalization we have done in 20 years” between the U.S. and EU, she noted.
The Commerce Department had little success when it tried to reduce the number of Section 232 exclusion applications that were rejected for technical problems by launching an applications portal in 2019, a Government Accountability Office report, released Sept. 15, said. The GAO said that the rejection rate went from 18% to 16% with the new portal. Even though the portal has mandatory fields, in an effort to eliminate incomplete submissions, the rejections for reasons other than an incorrect Harmonized Tariff Schedule code went from 27% in Regulations.gov to 43% in the portal.
The new lobbyist for the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America encouraged members to keep calling their elected representatives' offices to ask them to support a bill that would change clawback rules in the case of business bankruptcies. Currently, money paid to customs brokers in the 90 days before a bankruptcy filing is clawed back from those firms, even if the money was passed through to CBP for duty payments. CBP does not return the duties in this process, so a customs broker is on the hook for it, and has to get in line with other creditors for a partial payment.
The 10% tariffs on Canadian non-alloyed unwrought aluminum will be refunded back to Sept. 1, and the tariffs won't return unless Canadian exporters exceed either 70,000 tons or 83,000 tons in that category (see 2009150040), the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said on Sept. 15. The office said the limits start at 83,000 for the current month, then go to 70,000, then back to 83,000, then back to 70,000 for December. USTR did not say the tariffs would definitely return if Canadian exporters exceed these numbers by at least 5%, and suggested that if Canadian exporters reduced the next month's shipments by the same amount of the overage, that would satisfy USTR.
The day before Canadian countermeasures were to begin in response to 10% tariffs on Canadian non-alloyed, unwrought aluminum, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced it will end the Section 232 tariffs, retroactive to Sept. 1. The 10% tariff on the subsection of aluminum imports went into effect Aug. 16.
House Trade Subcommittee staffers are working “to make sure” that the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act gets a vote before Sept. 30, when the program expires, a Democratic trade staffer said Sept. 15. She said that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program will not be voted on this month. Several Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee had said they wanted GSP to hitch a ride with CBTPA, including the committee's top Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.
An informal adviser to the Joe Biden for President campaign and a former Trump administration political appointee at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative disagreed on the success of President Donald Trump's approach to trade and on the right way to take on China's heavy subsidization of industry and intellectual property theft.
The advance notice of proposed rulemaking on continuing education for licensed brokers is currently circulating in CBP for review, said CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez. Perez was speaking at an online conference of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America on Sept. 14. He did not say what kind of mandatory requirements would be part of the plan, but said that it will include a methodology for approving education accreditors, and said that the agency has “taken into account the excellent feedback from you and other trade stakeholders.” The NCBFAA supports mandatory continuing education, but has been concerned about the details (see 2002130025).
Mexican companies are finding they have less time to reform their union relationships than they had thought, and U.S. firms that contract with companies in aerospace, aerospace, auto and auto parts, cosmetics, industrial baked goods, steel, aluminum, glass, pottery, plastic, forgings, cement and mining sectors should be doing due diligence to learn what the plan is to come into compliance. The head of the AFL-CIO recently said they are planning to file a complaint within the month (see 2009040052).
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and his colleague Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking him to bypass the normal exclusion process and lift the 25% tariffs on steel that will be used to rebuild grain bins, machine sheds, or other construction projects in Iowa, and to remove the tariff for agricultural machinery manufacturers. They said that farmers who need to replace grain bins or other buildings with steel infrastructure are being gouged by “opportunists” after sustaining damage from a powerful wind storm Aug. 10, and that they don't have time to wait through the several months' process of applying for an exclusion. They said that the high prices being quoted are proof that there isn't enough domestic supply, and they believe allowing imports at market prices would curb abuses by domestic sellers. “Your staff has often said that one reason they need broad authority under the current Section 232 law is to have the flexibility in case of an emergency. Well, there’s clearly one now. We, and other Members of Congress, will be watching your response closely. We expect you to rise to the task,” they wrote.