International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 22-26 in case they were missed.
The Commerce Department will reconsider its denial of Section 232 exclusions for an importer of steel pipe, after the Court of International Trade on June 25 granted the government’s request to be allowed to reopen and add to the administrative record Commerce had previously presented the court and revisit its decision.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative ought not to announce 10% tariffs on Canadian aluminum at the end of this week, just before the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement goes into force, Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., told International Trade Today in an interview. The administration has not announced its intentions, but several outlets quoted unnamed sources saying the tariffs are coming if Canada doesn't agree to voluntary restrictions on its exports.
Reimposing Section 232 tariffs on Canadian aluminum “would be a major mistake,” National Foreign Trade Council President Rufus Yerxa said June 24. “It would completely undermine the spirit of our newly-negotiated” U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and “reignite trade tensions with our biggest trading partner. It will also hurt the most dynamic U.S. manufacturers in sectors like autos, food products and construction, all in a vain effort to prop up inefficient domestic aluminum producers by branding Canada a national security threat.” He said the administration should recognize that levying taxes on aluminum from Canada “would undermine our credibility as a reliable trading partner, not just with Canada, but with other potential free trade partners like the U.K. and Japan.”
A high-profile legal effort to declare Section 232 tariffs unconstitutional has come to an unsuccessful end, after the Supreme Court on June 22 issued an order declining to hear the case. The high court’s denial of certiorari leaves the American Institute for International Steel, the trade group that filed the lawsuit, with no remaining options to continue its two-year fight against the tariffs, which it had argued were an unconstitutional delegation of congressional tariff powers to the president.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told two senators concerned about retaliatory tariffs in India that the U.S. is working on restoring India to the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, but that it's slow going. “We’re in the process of restoring it if we can get an adequate counterbalancing proposal from them,” he told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who had complained that American apples are now taxed at 70% in India because of Section 232 tariffs on metals from that country.
Rep. Xochitl Torres-Small, D-N.M., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, introduced a bill June 8 that would extend the limits on importing Russian uranium.
Any future Section 301 exclusion renewals will only last until the end of the year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the House Ways and Means Committee as he testified June 17 about the administration's trade agenda, adding that “they will decide what happens after that.”
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 8-12 in case they were missed.
The Aluminum Association, which represents 120 companies, including the largest U.S. smelter, Alcoa, is pushing back against a call for Canada to again be subject to Section 232 tariffs on the metal The American Primary Aluminum Association's letter to the U.S. Trade Representative asked for the return of a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum. The group pointed to the closure of a Washington state Alcoa smelter as a reason to reimpose the tariffs.