Idaho's two senators and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., have asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Agriculture Department to consider initiating a dispute with Mexico over the restriction on fresh potatoes from the U.S. The letter, sent Aug. 18, notes that Mexico had agreed to allow fresh potatoes to be sold beyond a 16-mile U.S.-Mexico border zone (see 14052305), but that Mexican potato interests sued to stop the liberalization. That case is still pending. A House Republican from Colorado asked the administration last year to push Mexico on this issue (see 1909270061).
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Taiwan's an attractive free trading partner but not as important to exporters as China is. “I'm for a free trade agreement with Taiwan, but I wouldn't want that to stand in the way of a phase two deal with China,” he told reporters on a conference call Aug. 17. China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, and considers it part of China, not an independent country. Taiwan's president recently said he'd like negotiations to begin on an FTA (see 2008130010), and 161 House members have argued for opening negotiations with Taiwan (see 1912200014).
Three Republican senators threatened U.S. sanctions against a German port for helping to build Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline (see 2007150021), urging the port to stop providing “goods, services and support” for the project.” In an Aug. 5 letter to Fahrhafen Sassnitz GmbH, operator of Mukran Port, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the port should immediately stop supporting the Russian-flagged vessels Fortuna and Akademik Cherskiy.
Five senators introduced a bill to strengthen export controls on certain unmanned aircraft less than a month after the State Department loosened them. The measure, introduced Aug. 6, would block exports of certain drones to all countries except NATO members, Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. The senators said the legislation is designed to restrict sales to hostile Middle East countries, such as Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. should continue to pursue sanctions on China and encourage allies to impose their own restrictions for the recent arrests of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, a bipartisan group of lawmakers said. In an Aug. 10 statement, commissioners of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, including CECC Chair Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., and Co-Chair Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the United Nations Security Council should convene an “urgent meeting” to discuss Hong Kong’s so-called national security law (see 2008070039).
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls on Aug. 3 released a congressional notification transmittal sheet, detailing proposed arms sales, license amendments and license approvals from April through June. The sheet contains more than 40 proposed exports and license amendments.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the technical fixes to USMCA need to be done, and he hopes a technical fixes bill can pass the Senate by unanimous consent. The bill would allow refunds of merchandise processing fees in post-entry reconciliation (see 2007070056) and may also change treatment of foreign-trade zones, a change that those zones say is not a technical fix at all, but a policy change (see 2007200021).
House and Senate Democratic leaders subpoenaed four State Department officials and released parts of an interview with a former official that the lawmakers say raise questions about the administration’s controversial military sales to Gulf states last year (see 1907150033 and 1907300027). The interview -- a July 24 testimony by former State Department official Charles Faulkner -- points to a “small group” of agency officials who were “determined to ignore legitimate humanitarian concerns ... to ram through more than $8 billion in arms sales,” according to an Aug. 3 joint press release from House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez, D.-N.J.
A House oversight subcommittee is investigating the Trump administration's July decision to loosen export restrictions on gun silencers (see 2007130014), saying it is “deeply concerned” about a potential conflict of interest behind the decision. In a July 28 letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the House Oversight’ Committee Subcommittee on National Security, cited a July 13 report in The New York Times that the decision was made at the “urging” of White House lawyer Michael Williams, who previously served as general counsel to a gun advocacy group.
Pushing back against geographical indications for food names and wine names needs to be a priority “in all trade-related discussions,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., argued in a letter sent to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on July 30. Fifty-nine other senators joined the letter. Without naming the European Union, they said, “Our competitors continue to employ trade negotiations around the world to prohibit American-made products from using common food names and wine grape varietal designations or traditional terms, such as bologna, parmesan, chateau, and feta, which have been in use for decades.” Farm and agricultural industries issued a press release in support of the letter.