Paul Gluckman

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “properly exercised its authority” under the Section 307 modification provisions of the 1974 Trade Act when it ordered the imposition of the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the Court of International Trade ruled in an April 1 opinion. Test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, plus the more than 3,600 complaints that followed, sought to vacate the tariffs on grounds that lists 3 and 4A were unlawful without USTR launching a new Section 301 investigation.

The past two years have shown that global supply chains “are very vulnerable,” and especially vulnerable to “external shocks” like pandemics and war, Young Tae Kim, secretary-general of the International Transport Forum, told the World Trade Organization’s Global Supply Chains Forum March 21. “Some vulnerabilities are the result of internal factors as well,” he said.

The Forced Labor Working Group (FLWG), an ad hoc group of retail and fashion industries, “proposes a holistic and collaborative multi-faceted framework” for enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) “that will meet U.S. jurisprudence and due process requirements.” The proposal includes keeping a public database of bad actors and the tainted import goods they’re associated with, the FLWG said, in docket DHS-2022-0001. The group was created by the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the U.S. Fashion Industry Association.

July 6 marks the fourth anniversary of the List 1 Section 301 tariffs' taking effect on Chinese imports, and the 1974 Trade Act requires their expiration after four years, “unless some conditions are met,” said David Olave, a Sandler Travis associate and trade policy adviser, on a recent podcast. “No unilateral 301 action that I know has made it through the four years, so we’re about to witness trade policy procedural history,” he said.

While the consumer tech industry “condemns the use of forced labor” and “unequivocally supports” the Biden administration’s efforts “to end this scourge around the world,” there are concerns with the timing of new requirements, the Consumer Technology Association commented in docket DHS-2022-0001. The comments were due March 10 in response to a January DHS notice on how best to comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) by preventing goods produced with forced labor in China from being imported into the U.S.

The Court of International Trade heard oral argument on Feb. 1 over whether lists 3 and 4A of Section 301 tariffs were properly imposed, marking one of the largest cases in the CIT's history. The hourslong affair saw the judges push back on arguments made by both the Department of Justice and the plaintiffs, with significant attention paid to the procedural elements of the president's decision to impose the retaliatory Section 301 tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. In all, the three-judge panel of Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves heard from the Department of Justice, counsel for the test case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, and amici.

Gary Yacoubian, CEO of high-end speaker company SVS wants people to imagine going to bed one night, “and you wake up the next morning, and your cost of goods just went up by 15%,” he told a CES 2022 trade and supply chain workshop Jan. 5 of the Section 301 tariffs on finished speakers and subwoofers his company imports from China. Speakers and subwoofers with List 4A tariff exposure were originally dutied at 10% when they took effect in September 2019, and were later raised to 15%, then cut to 7.5% with the February 2020 enactment of the phase one trade deal with China.

There has been “major improvement” in recent weeks to ease congestion across the Port of Los Angeles, “but there’s still so much work to do,” Executive Director Gene Seroka told a Washington Post webinar Dec. 9. The profound shortage of truckers and warehouse labor in Southern California remains a severe problem that won’t ease anytime soon, he said.

The three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade presiding over the Section 301 litigation scheduled oral argument in the HMTX Industries-Jasco Products sample case for Feb. 1, 2022, at 10 a.m. in the court's Ceremonial Courtroom in New York, an order entered Nov. 12 in master case docket 21-cv-52 said. Chief Judge Mark Barnett had asked lawyers from both sides at a virtual status conference Nov.10 to email the court by Nov. 12 about schedule conflicts they had in January and February.

Tech companies and trade associations favor working more closely with U.S. trade partners to diversify information and communications technology (ICT) supply chains and make them more resilient to disruption and bottlenecks, several commented Nov. 4 in BIS-2021-0021. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security sought comment to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on supply chain disruptions in the “critical sectors and subsectors” of the ICT “industrial base” by the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order (see 2109170029).