U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai said that despite the president's prioritizing of the domestic economy, “I don't expect, if confirmed, to be put on the back burner at all.” Tai, a veteran of the House Ways and Means Committee trade staff, faced largely friendly questioning over a more-than-three-hour hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 25.
Thompson Hine trade attorney Dan Ujczo expects the only activity on trade in the first eight months of Joe Biden's presidency will be on issues either so small that they don't make a splash -- such as the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill and the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program -- or on issues that have an immediate need for action.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that a year ago, he would not have agreed with the European proposal to drop the Airbus/Boeing tariffs on both sides, to create space for negotiations to settle the case. “But with this administration trying to open things up with Europe and having a more multilateral approach to trade ... anything we can do to reduce tensions between Europe and the United States should be done,” he told International Trade Today during a call with reporters Feb. 23.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Feb. 16-19 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt told Yahoo Finance reporters that if the Section 232 tariffs were removed, his industry could suffer. The tariffs “were necessary,” he said. “The steel that would come from China -- the illegal steel that would come from China -- would find its way into Europe and then into the U.S.,” he said Feb. 19. If the tariffs were lifted, he said, steel that purportedly came from Europe could actually be from Asia. “I think it's too soon to take off the 232 [tariffs]. We need to make sure we can take care of the United States again,” he said. When the U.S. lifted Section 232 tariffs on Canada and Mexico, those countries agreed to anti-circumvention measures.
The Aluminum Extruders Council says that the Commerce Department's changes to the Section 232 exclusion process would grant “broad and unnecessary exclusions” from the 10% tariffs on aluminum, and that the exclusion changes should be rethought. Its Feb. 22 press release noted that the AEC made comprehensive comments on the changes. The group represents more than 120 companies.
Importers of steel and aluminum could be facing higher antidumping duty rates, after the Court of International Trade ruled Feb. 17 that Section 232 tariffs are a form of normal import duties that should be deducted from foreign exporters' U.S. prices in AD duty rate calculations. The trade court held that, unlike Section 201 safeguard duties and AD/CV duties, which are not deducted, the national security-based Section 232 tariffs have a different purpose unrelated to remediating injury from an import surge or underpriced imports.
Many expect trade policy under the Biden administration to be more worker-focused than consumer-focused, but many specifics remain undecided. “The jury is still out on what that pro-worker trade policy will look like in practice,” said Joshua Boswell, a lawyer at Crowell & Moring. Boswell spoke to a webinar audience Feb. 17 on the 2021 trade outlook and said such predictions don't tell you much about tariffs, free trade negotiations or trade remedies in and of themselves.
The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, which includes a number of machining trade groups, a construction trade group and others, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden Feb. 10 to ask him to lift Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. “The Trump steel tariffs have hurt small, family-owned manufacturers and the communities in which they built their businesses, while fracturing relations with overseas trading partners and spurring a frenzy of retaliatory trade measures -- with little to nothing to show for it at home,” the letter said. The coalition represents more than 30,000 companies in manufacturing and downstream supply chains. “More than 6.2 million Americans work in industries that use steel, while the steel industry itself directly employs only 140,000 workers,” it said, referring to tallies before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The data on employment in steel and aluminum production shows a muted benefit of approximately 1,000 more jobs. By comparison, a study by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors indicated that increased input costs due to the tariffs are associated with 75,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector.”
President Donald Trump didn't get China to agree to much in the way of structural changes, panelists said, but Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler said he put China front and center on the agenda, which was good. “He was really willing to take on the business community when it came to China,” she said. Cutler, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for more than 25 years, said that when she was at USTR, one of her frustrations in trying to negotiate with China was that U.S. “companies were pretty conflicted. They liked the … money they were making. They wanted us to be quote, unquote tough with China, but they didn’t want to be part of the get-tough strategy. Our hands were tied in a way.”