Costco has chartered three “ocean vessels” for the next year to transport containers between Asia and North America, “and we've leased several thousand containers for use on these ships,” Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said on a call Sept. 23 to discuss the results of fiscal Q4 ended Aug. 29. “Every ship can carry 800 to 1,000 containers at a time and we'll make approximately 10 deliveries during the course of the next year.” Costco's electronics sales in the quarter were "very good," but up against a tough comparison with a year earlier when "we had really outsized sales" amid COBID-19 stay-at-home orders, Galanti said.

American Apparel and Footwear Association CEO Steve Lamar told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that freight rates and delays are a crisis, and wrote, "We implore you ... to provide the kind of immediate and short-term relief that companies need today to survive this existential threat. We urge you to retroactively reinstate the expired Section 301 tariff exclusions. Further, we urge you to suspend the application of all Section 301 tariffs going forward. Combined, these actions would immediately make millions of dollars available to companies that are hardest hit by the shipping crisis."

Trade professionals and a trade scholar, talking on a panel that compared the Trump and Biden administrations' trade policies, said that not as much has changed on trade as might have been expected. Christine McDaniel, an economist at George Mason University, said she doesn't expect any of the Section 301 tariffs or the steel and aluminum tariffs to be lifted before the end of 2021. "I haven’t seen any indication they’re going to pull back on the tariffs," she said during a seminar at the Virginia Small Business Development Center on Sept. 21. "I’ve heard people say that the Trump trade policy is just being continued by the Biden administration, minus the rhetoric. You can make the argument for that."

July laptop and tablet imports to the U.S. showed sustained resilience despite tough comparisons with 2020, when most homes were hunkered down in their fourth full month of COVID-19 lockdowns, according to Census Bureau data accessed Sept. 13 through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal. But smartphone imports trended in the opposite direction, with shipments declining by double digits from the two most important source countries, China and Vietnam.

The National Association of Manufacturers CEO is calling on the Biden administration to "act as quickly as possible to finalize and publicize [its China] strategy. Such a clear, robust strategy on China, including U.S.-China trade, would be critical in bolstering manufacturers’ efforts to retain and hire American workers, invest in domestic operations and adjust supply chains, and providing meaningful opportunities for manufacturers to seek targeted relief from broad application of Section 301 tariffs."

The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users noted that the price of steel in the U.S. continues to climb, and the gap between U.S. prices and European prices is $734 a ton, up $118 in the last two weeks, while Chinese manufacturers pay $1,334/ton less than U.S. buyers. "The domestic steel industry’s capacity-utilization rate is up to 85 percent, far above the U.S. Commerce Department’s announced target of 80 percent that was used as a reason for the Trump Administration imposing the Section 232 steel tariffs in 2018," the coalition said. "U.S. manufacturers desperately need more steel, and one way to increase supply is for the Biden Administration to eliminate the Section 232 tariffs. With domestic steel producers enjoying record profits, it’s clear that this tariff protection is no longer needed.”

A new report from the Florida Department of Agriculture says that unfair competition with Mexican imports of blueberries, strawberries, watermelons, bell peppers, sweet corn and tomatoes is costing Florida farmers at least $1.31 billion in lost sales, or 10%, and possibly as much as $2.63 billion, or 20%. The report says that in 2000, Florida farmers of these and other specialty crops sold $3.32 billion worth of produce and that by 2019, it was $2.87 billion. The report does say that from 2005 to 2013, Florida farmers had more revenue from sales than they had in 2000, but since the figures are not adjusted for inflation, that is still not good news for the sector.

Representatives from manufacturing interests operating in Mexico said the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity to argue for locating more production in North America, for both reliability and speed, but there are still obstacles to making the argument for nearshoring as an answer to vulnerable supply chains. The president of the National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing Industry and the director of global trade compliance for Illinois-headquartered manufacturer Regal Beloit spoke at the Wilson Center's "Building a Competitive U.S.-Mexico Border" conference, which was held Aug. 10 and 11.

The National Retail Federation expects record imports through U.S. retail ports in August as consumer demand “continues to stretch supply chains and retailers shift from the back-to-school season to the peak shipping season for winter holiday merchandise,” the association reported Aug. 6. U.S. ports handled 2.15 million 20-foot-long cargo containers in June, which was down 7.8% from May, but up 33.7% from a year earlier, when many stores were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NRF said. It estimates July imports increased 15.7% from a year earlier, to 2.22 million containers, and is forecasting 12.6% year-over-year growth in August volume, to 2.37 million. That would top May’s 2.33 million “for the largest number of containers imported during a single month since NRF began tracking imports in 2002,” the association said. “Strong consumer demand has outpaced supply chain operations since late last year and could remain a challenge as the holidays approach,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president-supply chain and customs policy. “The continuing lack of labor, equipment and capacity has highlighted systemic issues and the need to create a truly 21st century supply chain to ensure resiliency against the next major disruption.”

More than 30 trade groups, led by the U.S.-China Business Council, are asking the Biden administration to retroactively restore product exclusions that expired last year, open a new exclusion application process "and continue negotiations with China to remove both nations’ counterproductive tariffs as soon as possible." In an Aug. 5 letter, the groups said China followed through on phase one promises to open to financial services providers and eliminate market access barriers for beef and some fruits and grains. They acknowledged that China is not on track to meet its purchase commitments, and said that China needs to be prodded to fully implement some other structural commitments, "particularly in the areas of biotechnology, patent linkage, services (including financial services), and protection of intellectual property rights."