Panelists from the U.S. and Mexico said that cars assembled in Mexico by Chinese-owned firms can't enter the U.S. with USMCA benefits because of the stringent rules of origin, but spent less time talking about how cars manufactured outside China, including in the U.S., could enter under 2.5% most favored nation tariffs.

The Federal Maritime Commission is preparing for another uptick in enforcement and is expecting a range of rulemakings to be finalized during or before FY 2025, including a new charge complaint process, a new container data collection effort and a new electronic court case management system. The commission previewed those updates as part of a $48.4 million congressional funding request released this week for FY 2025 -- about a $5 million increase from the $43.7 million it requested the previous year (see 2303200063).

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Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.

International Trade Commissioners grappled with how they should fulfill the administration's request for a report on the export competitiveness of the Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian, Indonesian and Pakistani apparel sectors over the last 11 years -- is it to uncover how those countries' successes could offer lessons to other developing countries that want to industrialize? Is the success of Bangladesh, which is near to crossing the threshold into a middle-income country largely on the strength of its garment sector, a country with an "unnatural and unfair advantage," because of its suppression of unions and wages, as the AFL-CIO's Eric Gottwald asserted?

Shippers continued to press the Federal Maritime Commission on why it allowed carriers to bill Red Sea-related surcharges without a 30-day notice, saying during a March 6 meeting of the National Shipping Advisory Committee that carriers failed to justify those charges.

House Ways and Means Subcommitee Chair Mike Kelly, R-Pa., warned that the committee would not "stand by idly and watch the Biden administration and Treasury Department sacrifice American tax dollars for political gain." Kelly, who was holding a hearing this week on the implications of international negotiations on extra-territorial taxes, including digital services taxes, said the draft deal at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will disadvantage U.S. firms.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she will be bringing up China's overproduction of electric vehicles as part of the 2026 USMCA review process, implying that she expects Mexico to reject Chinese investment in its auto manufacturing sector.

CBP has “cleared” its long-awaited proposed rule on low value shipments, and the proposal will now go to the Office of Management and Budget for review, acting Commissioner Troy Miller said at a Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting March 6. If OMB declares the rule “significant,” the proposal will then go for interagency review prior to publication in the Federal Register, Miller said.

Both co-sponsors of a bill to restrict Chinese goods from de minimis eligibility said that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who has the power to advance the bill, is interested in marking up the bill.