Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that a year ago, he would not have agreed with the European proposal to drop the Airbus/Boeing tariffs on both sides, to create space for negotiations to settle the case. “But with this administration trying to open things up with Europe and having a more multilateral approach to trade ... anything we can do to reduce tensions between Europe and the United States should be done,” he told International Trade Today during a call with reporters Feb. 23.
Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., led the reintroduction of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would create a rebuttable presumption that goods made in China's Xinjiang region are made with forced labor, and therefore banned from entry. Five other House members -- three Democrats and two Republicans -- also sponsored. In the news release announcing the Feb. 18 reintroduction, McGovern said, “We have watched in horror as the Chinese government first created, and then expanded a system of extrajudicial mass internment camps targeting Uyghurs and Muslim minorities.” The bill passed the House in the last Congress 406-3. This is a companion to the Senate bill introduced in January (see 2101290045).
The Senate Finance Committee scheduled a hearing to consider Katherine Tai to be the next U.S. trade representative. They will interview her Feb. 25 at 10 a.m.
Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the most prominent China hawks in Congress, thinks that the Bureau of Industry and Security is buried within an organization “hostile to the aggressive use of export controls,” and so it should be moved from the Commerce Department to the State Department, because, he says, that department puts national security first. Cotton, who has published a lengthy report on what he calls the economic long war with China, discussed his views during an online program at the Reagan Presidential Foundation on Feb. 18.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Feb. 11 that she would be sending a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that day, her first day leading the committee, to investigate N95 masks that were wrongly marked as coming from 3M. “We are looking to our FTC to make sure that there are no fraudulent products and materials out here, like masks, that my state is facing,” she said in a press release. An FTC spokesman said the agency has not yet received a letter.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he doesn't expect U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai to have a hearing before mid-March. Because there's nothing controversial about her, he said, if she does get a hearing before Congress takes its Easter break, he thinks the full vote can also be done within days. Grassley told reporters on a Feb. 16 phone call that when he spoke with Tai recently, he told her that “I appreciated this administration's approach to China, working to get Japan, South Korea, Europe, Canada, and the United States on the same page with China.” He said he also told her the United Kingdom free trade negotiations “ought to have priority.”
National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones President Erik Autor told two think tank scholars Feb. 11 that the organization's goal is to get Congress and other policymakers to see how the FTZ program can fit in the broader trade policy agenda. The trade group was disappointed that the USMCA technical fixes returned to the NAFTA rules of origin approach for FTZs, and wants to ensure that language is not repeated in any future free trade agreements, he said during his group's virtual summit. NAFTZ believes that allowing goods constructed in FTZs to receive USMCA benefits, if they meet the rules of origin, supports the new administration's Made in America ethos.
Twenty-two of Florida's 27-member House delegation, led by Democrat Rep. Darren Soto and Republican Rep. Bill Posey, told acting U.S. Trade Representative Maria Pagan that the European Union's 25% tariffs on grapefruit has hurt their constituents. “With the addition of a twenty-five percent retaliatory tariff on top of the existing 1.5 percent tariff, grapefruit exports from Florida have shrunk significantly,” their Feb. 5 letter said. Forty percent of Florida's fresh grapefruit production typically goes to the EU, the representatives said. Soto announced the letter in a news release Feb. 10. “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida growers have already been struggling to maintain their livelihoods. If immediate action is not taken and the United States loses the fresh grapefruit market in the EU, they could face even harsher consequences,” the letter said. EU officials have said they would be willing to lift the tariffs in the Boeing dispute for six months while the U.S. and the EU try to reach a settlement on aircraft subsidies.
Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Angus King, I-Maine, introduced a bill that would create a national standard for Made in USA labeling. Congress has tried previously to supersede state laws, with a 2016 bill (see 1607140068) making it through the House Energy and Commerce Committee but not reaching a vote on the floor. “Unfortunately, some states have made it unnecessarily difficult for businesses to use the ‘Made in USA’ label and empowered trial lawyers to get rich through differing labeling standards,” Lee said in a Feb. 10 news release. “This bill solves that problem by making one national standard for the ‘Made in USA’ label.” The senators say one state has a rigid 100% threshold and a complicated country of origin standard. They did not name the state, but California has its own Made in USA standard.
The Big Cat Safety Act, which would revise restrictions on the trade of lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, jaguars and cougars, was reintroduced by Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill. The same bill passed in December on a 272-114 vote. The bipartisan bill has 114 co-sponsors.