Alba Wheels Up recently acquired San Francisco-based customs brokerage KSI, the company said in a news release. “One of the largest independent customs brokers in the Bay Area with strength in customs clearances for the biotech and semiconductor industries,” KSI’s headquarters in San Francisco will now become Alba’s fifth office, alongside existing offices in Los Angeles, Houston, Jersey City and Valley Stream, New York, Alba said.
If the U.S. position on calculating the regional content of automobiles prevails in a USMCA state-to-state dispute, Baker McKenzie associate Eunkyung Kim Shin predicted, companies would be likely to import more parts used to assemble the automobiles. Shin, who spoke at a Baker McKenzie webinar Nov. 15, said that when the entire value of a part counts toward the vehicle regional content threshold once that part meets its own rule of origin, it makes sense to build the part in Mexico, the U.S. or Canada. But if the non-local content of those parts is not disregarded when doing vehicle-level calculations, it might be cheaper just to import the parts from a lower-cost country, she said.
The relationship between trade and green industrial policy is in tension, but Washington International Trade Association webinar panelists also said both supporting domestic interests and imports is unavoidable as the U.S. moves to reduce greenhouse gases.
The establishment of a “more practicable enforcement regime” for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act “needs to be front and center” for the U.S. government, Clearway Energy Group CEO Craig Cornelius said on an earnings call Nov. 2. Speaking during a call held to discuss third quarter earnings by subsidiary Clearway Energy Inc., Cornelius said the government needs to put ports in a position to handle the “dramatic” quantities of equipment that will need to enter the country to meet climate goals and the needs of the power grid.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's John Murphy said that manufacturers are some of the biggest supporters of free trade deals because half their goods are exported.
The Alliance for Trade Enforcement, a coalition of trade associations and business groups, says the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity needs effective dispute settlement to fulfill its promise for American exporters.
The Housing Affordability Coalition, a new group inspired by the invitation to submit information to the government about the economic impact of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, is arguing that higher tariffs on such items as vinyl flooring, cabinets, light fixtures, windows and the like is contributing to higher costs for new houses.
Large U.S. multinationals are more pessimistic about doing business in China than they have ever been, but it's not because they have come to expect the Section 301 tariffs will never go away. Rather, the annual U.S.-China Business Council membership survey found that lockdowns to control COVID-19 are the top problem for companies doing business in China, with 96% of respondents saying the lockdowns hurt their firms, and 48% saying that there was a severe negative impact.
Correction: Richard Harper, director of government affairs at the Outdoor Industry Association, noted, during an International Trade Commission hearing, that supply chains moved out of China for outdoor goods and other types of goods (see 2207210015).
The Coalition for GSP released a new analysis of trade data that says $1.7 billion was paid in tariffs that would have been eliminated through the Generalized System of Preferences from the benefits program's expiration through the end of June. Importers who want to take advantage of GSP mark those entries as such, because their tariffs will be refunded once it is renewed.