The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and that committee's chairman, as well as the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, urged the deputy U.S. trade representative to press Mexico and Canada on market access issues for the energy and agricultural sectors, and the senators also complained about barriers for the telecom, pharmaceutical and television industries in either Mexico or Canada. Deputy USTR Jayme White is meeting with Canadian and Mexican counterparts this week.
In its annual State of American Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce chose to emphasize the need to double the level of legal immigration, its opposition to Build Back Better legislation and what it sees as overly aggressive antitrust enforcement over the need to remove tariffs on hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Chinese imports. Three years ago, the Chamber was arguing that the tariffs needed to go (see 1901100007), but last year, admitted it was not politically feasible as it laid out its trade agenda (see 2101130057).
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Importers are concerned that they will face a higher likelihood of goods being detained over the suspicion of forced labor come June without having the benefit of government advice on effective due diligence and supply chain tracing. But even that advice may not be enough of a roadmap for companies to be sure they can escape the rebuttable presumption that the item they are importing that could have inputs linked to Uyghur labor or Xinjiang production should be barred from entry into the United States, said Ted Murphy, a partner at Sidley Austin.
CBP detained a total of 912 shipments between Oct. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2021 over the possible use of forced labor on the goods, the agency said in recently updated trade statistics for fiscal year 2022. The agency didn't reach a similar number of detentions until August last year (see 2108300032) and reported 90 detained shipments during the same period of FY21 (see 2101290050). The total value of the detained shipments for this current fiscal year so far is about $185.9 million, it said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Intel was wrong to remove a phrase from its supplier letters that told them they should not source goods or labor from China's Xinjiang province. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act says that any goods made with Uyghur labor outside Xinjiang, or made in Xinjiang, would be presumed to be made with forced labor, and therefore barred from entry into the U.S. CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said, "Once again, an American corporation has showed extreme cowardice by bowing to the sensitivities of the Chinese Communist Party, which is perpetrating a genocide against Uyghur Muslims. By removing language that explicitly prohibits the sourcing of goods from the Uyghur region of China, Intel is enabling the Chinese governments' efforts to profit from forced labor and bully the world into silence."
CBP detained a total of 1,469 shipments during fiscal year 2021, due to the possible use of forced labor on the goods, the agency said in an update on FY21 statistics. The agency also "processed approximately $2.8 trillion of imports, an increase of nearly 17 percent compared to the same period in Fiscal Year 2020," it said. "Overall, CBP collected approximately $93.8 billion in duties, taxes, and other fees on behalf of the U.S. government in FY2021, representing a 133% increase over a five-year period." CBP collected $74.4 billion in FY20.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, in a year-end video, pointed to a number of settlements during 2021 that both bolstered America's relationships with its allies and promoted the fight against climate change. She pointed to the settlement of a Section 337 case between two South Korean battery makers that allowed for a Georgia plant to open (see 2104120004); the settlement of the 17-year dispute over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing (see 2106150021 and 2106170025); and the agreement between the European Union and the U.S. to replace Section 232 tariffs with a quota system (see 2111010039).
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top 20 stories published in 2021 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference numbers.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.