The new chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees should move quickly to address expired or expiring trade programs, said the American Apparel and Footwear Association in a Jan. 7 letter to the lawmakers. The committee chairmen, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, "have an historic opportunity to expand US trade," the association said. The AAFA encouraged "immediate enactment of legislation to renew expired and expiring trade programs, such as the Generalized System of Preferences, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and the Nicaragua Tariff Preference Level. The AGOA program is set to expire later this year, while GSP and the Nicaragua programs are already expired.
Lawmakers may float a Trade Promotion Authority bill in the coming weeks that will mirror the TPA measure introduced a year ago, and the legislation will have the votes in both chambers to pass, said trade analysts and lawyers in recent interviews. There is likely to be small changes to the bill, which may attract a few more Democratic votes, most critically in the Senate, said the analysts and lawyers.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for 2014 in case they were missed.
The International Trade Commission posted the 2015 edition of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (here). The new HTS implements changes made by several presidential proclamations to the eligibility for preferential trade programs of Russia, Madagascar, Swaziland, Guinea, Guinea-Bisseau, and South Sudan. It also adds new statistical suffixes to several tariff subheadings for products that include plastic gift wrapping materials, diamond sawblade parts, and extension cords. Most of the changes take effect Jan. 1.
U.S. policy for customs valuation, import licensing and rules of origin, as well as the U.S. trade remedy regime and a range of other trade policies, have gone unchanged since the last U.S. trade policy review at the World Trade Organization, said the WTO in a summary (here). The WTO last reviewed the U.S. in 2012. U.S. free trade agreement partners are, however, selling more goods to the U.S., but preference program imports are declining, likely due to the Generalized System of Preferences expiration, said the review. Anti-dumping and countervailing duties investigations surged in recent years, particularly with steel products in 2013, the WTO added. Further, the 2014 Farm Bill eliminated two “long-standing pillars of dairy market support – price supports and export subsidies.”
International Trade Today sat down with incoming House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, on Dec. 11 at his office on Capitol Hill to discuss plans on trade. This is part two of the interview. Part 1 ran in our Dec. 11 edition (see 1412110030). Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Unfair South African antidumping duties on U.S. poultry products are jeopardizing the country’s beneficiary status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, said Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in a Dec. 9 letter to South African President Jacob Zuma (here). Set to expire in September 2015, AGOA provides duty-free access for sub-Saharan African exports, including agricultural goods, to the U.S. market. President Barack Obama chose to keep South Africa in the preference program in June, despite some speculation that the Obama administration would graduate the country from AGOA due to its economic growth (see 14062706).
Apparel company VF Corp. and the International Finance Corporation together lent an initial $1.3 million to three Bangladeshi factories for fire prevention and infrastructure upgrading, the companies said on Dec. 8 (here). "Through the financing arrangement, VF provides a full corporate guarantee for up to $10 million" in loans to VF’s contract suppliers, it said. VF, which owns Timberland, The North Face, Nautica and other apparel brands, is one of 26 members of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, an industry group American companies spearheaded in mid-2013 following a series of Bangladeshi labor disasters (see 13071613). The loans went to factory owners Arunima Sportswear, Olio Apparels, and Radisson Apparel. The Obama administration removed Bangladesh's Generalized System of Preferences beneficiary status due to labor conditions earlier this year (see 14042405).
Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the top Republican trade official in the Senate tore into President Barack Obama’s commitment to Trade Promotion Authority in recent days, saying he is not doing enough even after delivering a strong message of support for the trade agenda in comments on Dec. 3 (see 1412040025). At a press conference on Dec. 4, Boehner said Obama needs to ramp up efforts to build bipartisan support so TPA can pass the House. “I’ve been trying to do Trade Promotion Authority for three years, but that’s hard to do when the president won’t even stand up and ask it,” said Boehner (here).
The House passed on Dec. 3 the high-profile tax extenders legislation with an overwhelmingly supportive 378-46 vote in favor, but the measure advanced without amendment and is now sent to the Senate. Some trade supporters hoped lawmakers would tack trade bills, such as Generalized System of Preferences renewal, onto the extenders legislation. Senate Democratic leadership have not yet scheduled a vote on the tax bill.