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:
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Seventeen senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are asking the U.S. trade representative to reach "an expedited agreement with the European Union" so that tariffs don't return on exported whiskey Jan. 1. That tariff would be 50% under the schedule the EU imposed as retaliation for the Section 232 tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports.
A bill introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, would allow importers who paid Section 232 tariffs on steel or aluminum products that were later granted exclusions to get that money back, even if the deadline for liquidation or reliquidation has passed.
The top trade negotiator for the EU, Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, said the EU's political leadership sees "no prospect to agree on a concept" for a global arrangement on steel, to box out unfairly traded steel and privilege steel made with less carbon intensity.
Aluminum trade groups are in disagreement on a trade remedy case on aluminum extrusions, with the Aluminum Association and its Mexican and Canadian counterparts telling U.S., Canadian and Mexican government officials that "the filing of a 15-country trade case, which includes Mexico, by a subsection of U.S. aluminum extrusion producers threatens to overshadow the longstanding coordination and partnership between the aluminum industries in the three countries."
The text of a recent letter sent to the White House by Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Bob Casey, D-Pa., suggests that they have been told there will be reductions in Section 301 tariffs, and they said in the letter that they have serious concerns that these reductions "will enable China and other global competitors to resume their anti-competitive activities without consequences. While not the subject of interagency review, we share similar concerns about reductions in 232 tariffs, as well as related actions that would undermine American steel and aluminum producers as a result of negotiations with the European Union on the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum."
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.
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.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied importer PrimeSource Building Products' petition for writ of certiorari in a case on President Donald Trump's expansion of Section 232 duties onto steel and aluminum "derivative" products. PrimeSource argued that the president's decision to extend the duties onto these goods was unlawful since it was made beyond procedural time limits laid out in the statute (PrimeSource Building Products v. U.S., U.S. Sup. Ct. # 23-69).
A new Silverado Policy Accelerator report says not enough attention has been paid to China's production of mature or legacy semiconductors -- a category the paper calls "foundational" -- and the authors say ceding this market to China "would have significant national and economic security implications."