Former trade negotiators, think tank trade advocates, and a current political appointee at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative grappled with whether turning away from tariff-lowering free trade agreements is wise or misguided, whether years of globalization from 1995-2015 led to prosperity or economic carnage, and what type of issues should be tackled in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework or other trade deals.
The Office of U.S. Trade Representative asked Mexico to investigate Fujikura Automotive Mexico's factory in Piedras Negras, which it says may be blacklisting workers who were active in the union at Manufacturas VU. Manufacturas VU was the target of two rapid response labor mechanism findings under USMCA, and closed rather than implement the remediation plan that Mexico and the U.S. required it to do to maintain tariff benefits under the pact (see 2310100066).
Fourteen senators, led by Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., demanded that the Biden administration "set a clear deadline" for Mexico to enforce its 2019 joint agreement on steel and aluminum. That agreement lifted 25% tariffs on Mexican steel but said that the countries would monitor for export surges.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative moved Bryant Trick from acting assistant to assistant USTR for Europe and the Middle East, it said in a Dec. 11 news release. Prior to taking on the acting role in September, Trick, who has been at USTR for over 15 years, was deputy assistant USTR for Korea, USTR said.
A Mexican garment factory has successfully completed a remediation plan to resolve a rapid response complaint against its factory in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a Dec. 11 news release. The complaint against Industrias del Interior was the first USMCA facility-specific rapid response petition filed in the garment sector, USTR said.
Large steel and aluminum corporations and associations representing small and medium-sized metal processors, recyclers and environmental advocates told the International Trade Commission that it's on the right track in the questions it's asking about embedded carbon in steelmaking and aluminum smelting, but that choosing detailed data is tricky, and, in some cases, not possible for smaller companies to produce. Broadly, there are scope 1 emissions, which are the greenhouse gases produced through onsite processes; scope 2, which cover the purchased electricity needed for manufacturing and scope 3, which cover the embedded carbon of inputs, whether raw materials or semifinished goods.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said there is no interest in offering Taiwan "a very, very comprehensive, maximally liberalizing, aggressively liberalizing agreement." Tai, who was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum Dec. 7, was asked if the administration would pursue a free trade agreement with Taiwan, since Congress passed a bill welcoming such a negotiation. "We're not doing that with anybody right now," she added.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in preparation for its April Special 301 Report on countries that don't provide adequate protection of intellectual property rights, is seeking comments as well as requests to testify at a Feb. 21 hearing.
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 that would ban the import of seafood of Chinese origin -- which includes fish caught in Alaska but processed in China -- was introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and Rick Scott, R-Fla.