More than 230 environmental groups sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai asking her to seek climate peace clauses as she talks with the EU, countries participating in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and countries in the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Adrian Smith, R-Neb., said he intends to co-sponsor a renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and said he believes the appetite in Congress is "strong" to act before the summer of 2025. AGOA expires Sept. 30, 2025.
Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America's Sheep Committee petitioned U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to begin a safeguard investigation, and they say they want Congress to create a tariff rate quota for lamb and mutton, with the goal of domestic producers achieving a 50% market share by the 10th year of the TRQ.
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative senior advisers Jamila Thompson and Beth Baltzan and special counsel Victor Ban said during a recent trip to Wyoming, Montana and Idaho that workers they heard from want the office to increase the use of enforcement tools in the USMCA.
After a complaint from Casa Obrera del Bajio, a Mexican labor organization in Guanajuato state, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is asking Mexico to review whether workers at the Grupo Yakazi factory there were denied rights to freedom of association because of irregularities during the workers' vote in March on whether to retain the union that had been representing them.
A House bill to reinstate mandatory country of origin labeling for beef diverges from the Senate COOL bill (see 2301310026), which asks the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to develop a method to reinstate mandatory COOL that is compliant with the World Trade Organization.
President Joe Biden signed the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade First Agreement Implementation Act into law Aug. 7 but said there are constitutional concerns with language that would require the U.S. trade representative to provide negotiating texts to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees "in the midst of negotiations," and would also preclude USTR from presenting its text to Taiwan while Congress is reviewing it.
The National Foreign Trade Council said Canada's proposed digital services tax "is clearly discriminatory towards U.S. companies," and the bill's introduction is shortsighted.
Anabel Gonzalez, one of the World Trade Organization's deputy directors-general, said in a farewell column that although progress is being made on improving the WTO, "governments face some tough choices in the months and years to come to deal with pressing matters that, if left unchecked, could seriously erode the multilateral trading system and damage trade as an engine of growth and prosperity."
China's exports of cars have jumped sharply as its domestic car demand has flattened, experts said, but the impacts for U.S. auto production may not repeat what happened to other manufacturing sectors undercut by cheap Chinese imports.