More than 200 companies, and local and national business groups asked the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee to pass a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill that refunds the tariffs paid since the beginning of 2021 and extends tariff relief through 2026.
The Senate voted 87-11 to approve a laddered temporary spending bill that will continue government appropriations at last fiscal year's level through Jan. 19 for some agencies and through Feb. 2 for others.
The House of Representatives voted against proceeding to consider an appropriations bill that covers Commerce, Justice and Science related agencies, by a vote of 198-223.
The House of Representatives will vote on an amendment that would require the Commerce Department to conduct "a comprehensive study on domestic tin plate steel production and the demand for steel food cans in the U.S. ahead of moving forward with proposed tin-plate steel tariffs."
As the negotiators push to get agreement on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in San Francisco, two Senate committee chairmen are arguing that the trade pillar should be jettisoned, or at least delayed until the administration can build support in Congress.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance hailed a recently introduced bipartisan bill that would require cargo imported by air or land to be covered by publicly accessible manifests, just as is cargo that comes over the oceans (see 2311030022).
Twenty of Florida's 28 representatives, led by Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republican Mario Díaz-Balart, are calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to reinstate the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, which expired almost three years ago.
The New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of pro-free trade Democrats, publicly released a letter to the president asking him to change course on trade, and work on traditional free trade agreements that lower tariffs and go through congressional approval. President Joe Biden has declined to work on any trade-liberalizing FTAs, saying that deals that can be negotiated more quickly that address supply chains, trade facilitation and other non-tariff barriers are more fit for today's challenges.
The chairman and top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to consider launching a new Section 301 investigation for autos, in order to examine the harm that China's subsidization and technology transfer practices could do if Chinese electric vehicles start entering the U.S. in large numbers.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden and the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Mike Crapo, are asking CBP to explain how it uses AI in both trade enforcement and trade facilitation, with detailed questions on where it's used, how it's validated and whether the agency allows importers and exporters to challenge a decision that is based on AI.