President Joe Biden nominated Deborah Robinson for intellectual property enforcement coordinator for his administration, the White House said in a May 8 news release. Robinson, a lawyer, is currently head of intellectual property enforcement at Paramount Global.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comments on eligibility criteria in the definition of “specialty sugar” for the agency’s sugar tariff-rate quota regulations, it said in a notice released May 5. The agency said that while the definition of specialty sugar in a 1990 interim final rule said specialty sugar must “require no further refining, processing, or other preparation prior to consumption, other than incorporation as an ingredient in human food,” a subsequent final rule in 1996 changed the overall definition but did not specify whether that criterion was still included. It is not reflected in the Code of Federal Regulations. USTR now seeks comments on whether it should amend the definition of specialty sugar to reflect the criterion. Comments are due July 7.
The U.S. readout of the meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Canada's trade minister, Mary Ng, mentioned Canada's proposed digital services tax. "Ambassador Tai expressed her hope that the United States and Canada could work together on this issue that could unfairly impact U.S. businesses," it said.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that after her first visit to Brazil, she was struck by "a lot of synergies between the United States and Brazil." She said it also got her "thinking about ourselves as the product of an earlier version of globalization -- the colonial/imperial project."
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, speaking from Asia, where she had just finished a round of meetings with Philippine and Japanese officials, said the U.S.-China trade war did not come up in her meetings, as these visits focused much more on the bilateral trade and economic relationship.
After a union vote at Unique Fabricating in Santiago de Querétaro, where workers picked an independent union, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has declared its labor concerns resolved.
The U.S. and Mexican governments have reportedly made progress toward better aligning their Authorized Economic Operation programs, according to a "mid-year review" fact sheet on the U.S.-Mexico High-Level Economic Dialogue, released April 19. In the last six months, CBP provided training for the Mexican AEO team and in February, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism and AEO Mexico representatives worked together to modify the Minimum-Security Criteria requirements for Mexico’s AEO program, which Mexico anticipates will be published in April after its legal review and approval by the Mexican Secretariat for Home Affairs, the fact sheet said.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and her counterpart from the EU, Valdis Dombrovskis, said their discussions on a critical minerals agreement and a deal to privilege green steel and aluminum trade were productive. It was the fourth time this year that Tai and the EU's top trade official met.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai officially signed the instrument of acceptance of the World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies deal struck at the 12th Ministerial Conference. With the signing, the U.S. became the fourth WTO member, and first large fishing nation, to formally accept the deal. Two-thirds of WTO members must accept the deal for it to take effect.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that NAFTA had to be renegotiated because it wasn't good for American, Canadian or Mexican workers. The traditional labor complaint about NAFTA is that Mexico gained jobs at America's expense, but Tai, in a talk at the World Economy Summit hosted by Semafor on April 12, said it wasn't good for Mexican workers "because workers in Mexico did not have the opportunity really to advocate for themselves and better their conditions."