The Canadian press noted that Canada is working to convince officials that might serve in a future Trump administration to spare Canadian goods from a global 10% tariff, but former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who recently traveled to Canada, has said Canada won't necessarily be exempted.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a long acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention July 18, said Chinese companies are building large automobile factories in Mexico, and that "the United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen." He also said their leader "should be fired immediately, and every single autoworker, union and nonunion, should be voting for Donald Trump because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing, and we’re going to bring it back fast."
Former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania Pat Toomey, who was one of the strongest advocates of free trade when he served in the Senate, told a moderator from the American Enterprise Institute that he doesn't believe Congress will pass more detailed legislation to curtail agencies' leeway to write regulations. A Supreme Court decision said judges will have more authority to overrule regulations, as the deference they had given to reasonable regulation is no longer the judicial branch's baseline.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a sit-down interview with Bloomberg shortly before the attempt on his life, argued that tariffs are "phenomenal" economically -- "and man, is it good for negotiation."
Dan Ujczo, senior counsel in Thompson Hine's trade practice, said he expects a second Biden or Trump administration to say it won't authorize USMCA to continue for another 16 years in 2026, when the trade pact is up for review.
Although it's possible presidential candidate Donald Trump was just riffing when he proposed eliminating the federal income tax and replacing the revenue with tariffs, the White House Council of Economic Advisers is countering the idea with a white paper it issued July 12.
Canada's half-hearted attempts to comply with dairy tariff rate quotas and the refusal of the U.S. to comply with the auto rules of origin ruling are undermining the USMCA and could make its review more painful, panelists from Canada and Mexico said this week.
Tariff carve-outs for Mexican steel and aluminum in the Section 232 action will be curtailed, so that only steel that is melted and poured in North America can qualify, and so that aluminum that was smelted or cast in China, Russia, Belarus but worked again in Mexico will be taxed at higher rates.
A former top trade negotiator in Mexico, Juan Carlos Baker Pineda, said he doesn't think the review of the USMCA will be about fine-tuning or technical changes to the trade pact.
In a bill that Republicans say is "rightsizing agencies and programs," the division of the Commerce Department that handles antidumping and countervailing duties administration would be cut by 5.7% -- $7 million -- from the current fiscal year. The bill also proposes cutting funding of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative by 8.1% -- $6 million -- from current spending. The International Trade Commission, which manages changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule code, provides independent analysis crucial to the AD/CVD process, and manages the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill product nominating process, would get a 5.7% cut, $7 million less than current spending.