Congress should approve tougher sanctions and import restrictions to stem the deadly and illegal flow of fentanyl into the U.S., the House Select Committee on China said in a new report April 16.
Ahead of congressional hearings featuring U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president said on an April 15 press call that his organization is concerned about the “laissez faire” approach he said the Biden administration has been taking in negotiating against foreign trade barriers and enforcing existing U.S. trade agreements.
The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America told President Joe Biden that removing tariffs on shoes doesn't require public policy reviews but "just the stroke of your pen to help lower shoe prices."
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote to President Joe Biden saying that he should "take bold, aggressive action and to permanently ban" electric vehicles "produced by Chinese companies or whatever subsidiaries they establish to conceal their origins."
A recent bill from House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, would change the drawback statute so that items that have a Harmonized Tariff Schedule description beginning with "other" no longer would be ineligible for unused substitution drawback, drawback expert Dave Corn said.
A new bill from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican and a Democratic member would renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade preference program for 16 years, offer more flexibility on country eligibility reviews, and soften the high-income graduation rules.
Five members of House Ways and Means Committee and the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific introduced a bill that would set up an ‘‘Indo-Pacific Trade Strategy Commission’’ to make recommendations to Congress on a comprehensive trade policy in the region, and direct the International Trade Commission to produce a report on how the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral free trade agreement and China's Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership multilateral free trade agreement affect U.S. exports and growth opportunities in the Indo-Pacific. The report also would address differences between the TPP successor, RCEP, and the USMCA, and the impact of Asian regional trade agreements on U.S. supply chain resiliency, and how they affect China's role in key global supply chains.
Lori Wallach, head of Rethink Trade and a longtime free-trade skeptic, said the House Ways and Means Committee plans to vote next week on a new bill to restrict de minimis, which wouldn't allow goods subject to Section 301 tariffs to enter through the de minimis pathway. The Section 301 tariffs covered roughly two-thirds of Chinese exports at the time the last round was imposed, but trade flows have shifted as a result of the tariffs, as imports of those tariff lines from China fell by 13%, according to the International Trade Commission.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she hopes "we can announce the result of [the Section 301] review soon," though she later declined to say whether that would be when she appears next week before the House and Senate committees that oversee her office.
The Federal Maritime Commission's enforcement bureau is asking the agency's administrative law judge to fine major ocean carrier Mediterranean Shipping Company $63.2 million for violating U.S. shipping regulations. MSC used “overbroad” merchant clauses in its bills of lading, billed incorrect rates for certain containers and failed to publish certain container tariff rates, causing "obscurity" and "uncertainty" for shippers, the commission's Bureau of Enforcement, Investigations and Compliance said in an April 3 report.