House Ways and Means Committee Trade Subcommittee Chairman Adrian Smith, R-Neb., said he thinks the chances are good for renewing the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program in 2024, due to bipartisan interest in the legislation. "A lot of members have examples from their district of why we need GSP." He added that a three-year lapse of the benefit program is "inexcusable."
Former trade negotiators, think tank trade advocates, and a current political appointee at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative grappled with whether turning away from tariff-lowering free trade agreements is wise or misguided, whether years of globalization from 1995-2015 led to prosperity or economic carnage, and what type of issues should be tackled in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework or other trade deals.
Congress should remove permanent normal trade relations status for China, but rather than move Chinese imports into Column 2, it should create a China-specific tariff schedule "that restores U.S. economic leverage to ensure that the [Chinese government] abides by its trade commitments and does not engage in coercive or other unfair trade practices and decreases U.S. reliance on [Chinese] imports in sectors important for national and economic security," the House Select Committee on China wrote as one of its dozens of legislative recommendations in its "Strategy to Win America's Economic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party." The report, released Dec. 12, also recommended:
A bipartisan pair on the House Ways and Means Committee argue that offering more generous competitive needs limitations under the Generalized Systems of Preferences benefits program will help importers shift supply chains out of China, and they recently introduced a bill that would reform the CNL program.
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.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Adrian Smith, R-Neb., said in a hallway interview at the Capitol that he thinks there is momentum for an end-of-the-year tax bill to come together. He said he would like a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program to get attached to such a bill. "I think there's bipartisan interest, and that's key," he said, but he said he's not predicting that it will happen.
Twenty of Florida's 28 representatives, led by Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republican Mario Díaz-Balart, are calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to reinstate the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, which expired almost three years ago.
The New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of pro-free trade Democrats, publicly released a letter to the president asking him to change course on trade, and work on traditional free trade agreements that lower tariffs and go through congressional approval. President Joe Biden has declined to work on any trade-liberalizing FTAs, saying that deals that can be negotiated more quickly that address supply chains, trade facilitation and other non-tariff barriers are more fit for today's challenges.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who earlier said the priority should be renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act "as soon as possible and for a lengthy period," rather than making reforms to the trade preference program, has now put out a "discussion draft" that lays out some reform proposals.
Mauritania will participate in the African Growth and Opportunity Act program and receive benefits next year, since it has made progress in ending hereditary slavery, but Ethiopia, which was expelled from participation due to human rights violations during a rebel uprising, won't be allowed back in.