A bill that would change a number of tax provisions, including tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that govern where critical minerals, advanced batteries and electric vehicles can be sourced, passed the House Ways and Means Committee on a party-line vote.
A recently introduced bill would end Chinese and Russian shippers' eligibility for de minimis, and would order the Treasury Department to determine, within 180 days, what rates the other countries deserve for de minimis, based on both their own de minimis treatment of U.S. shipments and their threshold to collect a value-added tax, if they have one.
A bill that approves the Taiwan trade initiative, but says it cannot take effect until the administration submits an economic analysis of its effects and answers questions from Congress on implementation, passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a 42-0 vote.
The bipartisan sponsors of The Americas Act, an ambitious bill that would invite most Central and South American countries into USMCA and offer funds to companies moving production from China to the U.S. or an Americas Act country, as well as covering diplomatic and temporary work visas, said they are working to line up support in Congress, talking to the administration, and talking to Western Hemisphere countries that could benefit from the policy, in an effort to get the bill passed.
Sen. Joe Manchin, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told the Treasury Department that its approach to measuring the value of critical minerals in electric vehicle batteries "seriously misconstrued the plain language and clear purpose of the critical minerals and battery component requirements" in the Inflation Reduction Act, and defeats Congress's goal of using consumer tax credits to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains for EV batteries.
Although the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade does not change tariffs, and therefore the administration says no legislative approval is needed, the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees that deal with trade have introduced a bill that would give it congressional approval.
Just after the administration asked the International Trade Commission to examine the emissions intensity of the steel and aluminum sectors, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate to tell the Energy Department to conduct a comprehensive study of the emissions from the production of aluminum, cement, iron and steel, plastic, and products made from all those materials, fertilizer, glass, lithium-ion batteries, paper and pulp, solar panels and cells, wind turbines, crude oil, refined oil products, natural gas, hydrogen, refined critical minerals and uranium.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and three Republican senators reintroduced the China Trade Cheating Restitution Act to require CBP to pay interest on distributions of antidumping duties and countervailing duties to domestic producers under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, which applies to entries prior to Sept. 30, 2007.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked the Commerce Department to change its rules for Section 232 tariff exclusions for extruded aluminum. In a June 7 letter, he argued that the tariffs protect primary aluminum producers, but that "overly broad tariff exclusion rules" have resulted in insufficient protection for U.S. aluminum extrusions.
A bipartisan group of House members and Senators have reintroduced a wide-ranging bill to change antidumping and countervailing duty laws, after the bill failed to advance last year.