White House trade policy adviser Peter Navarro said the list of Chinese products that could be subject to 25 percent tariffs will be a subset of the original list of 1,300 products released in April (see 1804040019). Whether the Section 301 tariffs come to bear against those products will be up to the president to decide, he said while speaking at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal on June 12. The administration has said the tariff list would be released this week.
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International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 4-8 in case they were missed.
Eight House Republicans, including seven from the Texas delegation, went to bat for constituent tech companies trying to fend off Trade Act Section 301 tariffs of 25 percent on imports from China, with the final tariffs list due out this week (see 1805290010). The eighth GOP member said he wants to protect one company, Cree, from paying higher duties on the LED wafers that it makes in North Carolina, ships to China, and re-imports to the U.S. as finished, packaged chips.
BALTIMORE -- The first round of Section 232 product exclusions should be released soon, said Rich Ashooh, assistant secretary for export administration at the Department of Commerce. "The [Commerce] secretary is very anxious to reach that milestone," he said in response to a question from International Trade Today. Ashooh spoke at the annual American Association of Exporters and Importers Conference June 7.
Several lawmakers submitted letters for and against the inclusion of specific tariff codes in the proposed list of products to face higher tariffs under the Section 301 investigation. The letters were posted in the Section 301 docket on June 5, though many are dated from May. Among the letters are a request from Rep. Glenn Thompson, R- Pa., that bookbinding machinery be removed from the list, and a request from Reps. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., asking that vehicle hoists receive tariffs. Eight members of the California delegation asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative not to impose tariffs that would harm the state's agricultural industry, and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., complained that the administration has "hesitated" to implement the tariffs.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for May 29 - June 1 in case they were missed.
Chinese pledges to buy more U.S. agricultural products and natural gas (see 1805200002) are still on the table, but China said that if Section 301 tariffs are levied, these purchases will not happen. On June 4, the White House issued a summary of the talks between the Chinese and a delegation led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that happened in Beijing the previous two days. "The meetings focused on reducing the United States’ trade deficit by facilitating the supply of agricultural and energy products to meet China’s growing consumption needs, which will help support growth and employment in the United States," the statement said.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with the trade ministers of Japan and the EU in Paris May 31 and “confirmed their shared view that no country should require or pressure technology transfer from foreign companies to domestic companies” through the use of joint-venture requirements, licensing processes or “other means,” they said. The ministers discussed “the harmful effects of regulatory measures that force foreign companies seeking to license technologies to domestic entities to do so on non-market-based terms that favor domestic entities,” the officials said. They explored the need “to establish and share best practices” to thwart government practices that “unfairly facilitate the systematic investment in, and acquisition of, foreign companies and assets to obtain technologies and intellectual property and generate the transfer of technology to domestic companies,” they said.
The planned Section 301 tariffs on $50 billion in goods from China are "decades overdue," said Coalition for a Prosperous America Chairman Dan DiMicco in a news release on the White House announcement that the tariffs will go forward (see 1805290024). "We appreciate that President Trump is now making clear that the age of appeasement for China’s trade cheating is at an end," DiMicco said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for May 21-25 in case they were missed.