The U.S. requested consultation on Jan. 13 with China over antidumping and countervailing duties imposed on U.S. grain oriented flat-rolled electrical steel (GOES) exports to the country, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) officials, including USTR chief Michael Froman, told reporters at a press conference. The U.S. says the duties, initially imposed in 2010, fail to meet World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) recommendations for compliance and continue to violate WTO agreements, the officials said.
The U.S. and Libya signed on Dec. 18 a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement that will provide a forum to address trade issues and eliminate barriers to trade, said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) in a press release. The agreement will address market access and intellectual property rights, among other issues, said USTR. USTR did not respond for comment on the specifics of the deal.
WikiLeaks released the previously undisclosed Intellectual Property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, currently being negotiated by the U.S. and 11 additional nations. WikiLeaks obtained the 95-page document after the August 26-30 TPP summit in Brunei, said WikiLeaks in a Nov. 13 press release (here). The leak comes as chief TPP negotiators prepare to meet in Salt Lake City from Nov. 19 to 24 (see 13110110).
The Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) presented lists of outdoor performance apparel and footwear products that should receive both tariff protections and eliminations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Senior Director for Government Affairs Alex Boian said on Oct. 17. The OIA submitted the list to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the U.S. Department of Commerce on Sept. 25, and to the Vietnamese government the following day, said Boian. The association also publicized their activities in an Oct. 17 statement to the public (here) .
Most federal employees furloughed by the shutdown returned to work Oct. 17, after President Barack Obama signed a bill in the early morning hours to fund the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management said employees are expected to return to work, although it also told agencies to be flexible. Agency websites and databases were restored throughout the morning of Oct. 17. Some websites were slow to come back up on the morning after work resumed -- the Foreign-Trade Zones Board website still redirects to a message about the shutdown as of press time, for example. But most websites, including the International Trade Commission’s online Harmonized Tariff Schedule, are back online. Many agencies anticipate delays as they work through backlogs that accumulated during the shutdown.
The U.S. Trade Representative's Oct. 8 decision to let the International Trade Commission's import ban stand was not surprising, despite a recent USTR veto of an Apple product import ban (see 13080515), said aid Benjamin Levi, a McKool Smith attorney who has argued patent cases before federal courts and the ITC. The patents at issue in the Samsung import ban were not standard-essential patents (SEPs) -- the main factor in the USTR's decision to veto the Apple import ban in August, he said. There remains "some uncertainty" over the full extent to which USTR's veto of the Apple import ban will become a precedent in other cases involving SEPs, Levi said. "But I would doubt that the USTR would routinely veto exclusion orders based" on SEPs, he said.
The U.S. stance on Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) tobacco market access provisions violates the World Trade Organization (WTO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and threatens the global effort to reduce tobacco use, said Executive Director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Georges Benjamin in an Oct. 2 letter to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman. The U.S. should endorse the Malaysian proposal put forth in August for a tobacco carve-out in the TPP framework, said Benjamin.
Those involved in international trade were reporting relatively few impacts of the government shutdown, in its second day, but expressing concerns about the longer term. Most industry officials told us traffic continues moving through ports and airports.
The trade industry was still assessing the short- and long-term effects of the government shutdown Oct. 1. CBP had already said its core functions would not be immediately affected (see 13093028). And the U.S. National Airspace System was operating normally Oct. 1, with no reports of any impact to operations due to the government shutdown, said The International Air Cargo Association.
A bipartisan group of 60 Senators sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman Sept. 23 to encourage U.S. implementation of robust currency manipulation disciplines in future free trade agreements (FTAs). The Senators endorsed the U.S. push to conclude Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations but emphasized the impact currency manipulation has on U.S. employment (see 13091014).