The Senate Finance Committee held a confirmation hearing on April 10 for William Kimmitt to serve as undersecretary of commerce for international trade. In this role, Kimmitt would lead the International Trade Administration, the wing of the Commerce Department tasked with enforcing antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
House Democrats, left and center, introduced a bill that would roll back all the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act -- 10% global tariffs and those on Canada and Mexico -- and would require that most tariffs, quotas, tariff rate quotas or concessions receive approval from Congress before going into effect.
The most unwavering defenders of President Donald Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" policy -- including House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. -- were a bit undercut during a four-hour hearing on the president's trade agenda, because Trump reacted to Treasury market volatility and backed down.
The decline of U.S. commercial shipbuilding -- and the fact that it's not cost-competitive with Japanese and South Korean shipbuilding -- must be rectified, the administration said, but the precise details of how that can be accomplished are yet to be determined.
Only 13 hours after reciprocal tariffs of 11% to 84% began, President Donald Trump said he is pausing the higher country-specific tariffs for 90 days -- except for China, whose total emergency tariff will go from 104% to 125%, according to a White House spokesperson. The baseline additional 10% tariff -- which applies to nearly all countries, but not Mexico and Canada -- remains in place.
The potentially competing objectives of President Donald Trump's April 2 tariffs could mean that they won't go away anytime soon, experts suggested during an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The $1.5 million and $1 million docking fees proposed under the Section 301 shipbuilding case (see 2502240006) are "just those -- they're proposed actions," U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., during an appearance in front of the Senate Finance Committee April 8.
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee mostly stood by President Donald Trump's dramatic tariff moves, though many emphasized that the result should be lower non-tariff barriers for U.S. agricultural exports, not a permanent tariff wall around the U.S. economy.
The European Commission has proposed 25% retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. goods in response to the tariffs on steel and aluminum President Donald Trump imposed last month (see 2503120042), according to a document seen by Reuters, the news service reported April 7.
Trade groups mostly reacted in alarm to the dramatic change in tariffs with every country that is coming this month, whether because of expected retaliation against their exports or, in the case of sectors that are largely supplied by imports, the increase in costs.