House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., in introductory remarks at an organizational meeting of the committee Jan. 31, said the Biden administration "has sadly ignored our foreign trade partners, shut off access to new markets for American goods, and allowed China to gain influence around the globe. U.S. exporters only get preferential access to fewer than 10 percent of the world’s customers -- it’s time to do more to sell American."

Nineteen House Republicans, led by Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, introduced a non-binding resolution this week calling on the administration to negotiate a free trade agreement with Taiwan. The lawmakers also want the U.S. to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, and establish formal diplomatic relations.

Florida's two senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, reintroduced a bill that would allow producers of seasonal produce to more easily bring an antidumping or countervailing duty case against foreign competitors. Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., and Darren Soto, D-Fla., introduced a companion bill. The Republican senators are calling it the "Defending Domestic Produce Production Act." Florida growers have not been able to convince a majority of growers around the country to support a trade remedy action, so these bills are designed to get around that problem. The bills were first introduced in 2018.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and ranking member Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that USMCA's full potential has not been realized, and that USTR must pursue "robust enforcement."

Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., and Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., introduced a resolution that would end the administration's pause on antidumping and countervailing duty collection for solar panel firms operating in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam that have been identified as circumventing AD/CV duties on Chinese solar panels. That was the finding of a preliminary determination published in December.

Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., who was the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, will take the chairmanship of the subcommittee now that Republicans are in the majority. The announcement was made Jan. 26. He issued a statement that said American consumers and producers are sitting on "the sidelines of the global economy because of the Biden administration’s failure to put forward a proactive trade agenda."

Republicans named members to the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party. The committee will be bipartisan, but its Democratic members have not yet been announced.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., introduced a bill that would stop electric vehicle tax credits for buyers until the Treasury Department issues guidance on battery and critical mineral content. The tax credits are currently available for North-America-assembled vehicles, no matter the content of their batteries, as Treasury said it needed more time to write guidance for those aspects of the law.

Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Bob Casey, D-Pa., are continuing to press Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to convince the president to hike tariffs on transformer inputs such as grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) laminations and cores. The two senators, who have a grain-oriented electrical steel producer in each of their states, published their letter on Jan. 13.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., new to the position, announced the committee's new Republican members: