CBP will allow importers to continue to use Part 102 NAFTA marking rules for goods imported from Canada and Mexico, even though they are no longer a requirement for USMCA preferences, said James Kim, a lawyer with CBP’s Office of Regulations and Rulings currently working at the agency’s USMCA center, during a Zoom call following a panel discussion March 9.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated March 3. The following headquarters rulings were modified recently, according to CBP:
Joseph Barloon, former Office the U.S. Trade Representative official, has rejoined Skadden Arps as a partner in the firm's Washington, D.C., office, the law firm announced in a March 1 news release. Barloon served as general counsel from 2019 to 2020 and then as acting deputy USTR from 2020 to 2021, overseeing litigation against the U.S.'s largest trading partners and implementation of the USMCA. Barloon was nominated to be a judge at the Court of International Trade by President Donald Trump but wasn't confirmed (see 2102050032).
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said March 2 that he hasn't yet gone over Katherine Tai's written answers after her hearing but that he expects to vote for her confirmation as U.S. trade representative. Although he didn't work with Tai personally on USMCA, he said his team did so and “had nothing but good things to say about her.” Grassley said he doesn't expect to be able to tell how trade policy is going to unfold from the written answers (see 2103010026). “I think she’ll be approved a long time before we know exactly how” President Joe Biden's “administration is going to handle U.K.” negotiations, if it's going rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, “what they’re going to do in regard to China, what they’re going to do in sub-Saharan Africa, like [President Donald] Trump was starting with Kenya,” he said during a conference call with reporters. “I think you’re going to get well into the middle of the year before you see any direction.”
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Feb. 22-26 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Biden administration is emphasizing the need to fight forced labor and exploitative labor conditions, as well as using trade to fight climate change, in the first Trade Agenda published since President Joe Biden took office.
Across dozens of pages of written answers to Senate Finance Committee members, U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai often avoided directly answering questions, instead pledging to work with senators on their priorities. One of the most common questions posed to Tai was whether she would renew Section 301 exclusions that expired last year; as well, whether she would allow companies that were denied exclusions another chance at a request; and whether she would reopen the exclusion process.
U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai said that despite the president's prioritizing of the domestic economy, “I don't expect, if confirmed, to be put on the back burner at all.” Tai, a veteran of the House Ways and Means Committee trade staff, faced largely friendly questioning over a more-than-three-hour hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 25.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has warmly endorsed Katherine Tai to be U.S. trade representative. In a letter sent Feb. 23, Executive Vice President Myron Brilliant said her experience at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and as chief trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, is invaluable. “She combines policy acumen, negotiating experience, and political savvy,” he wrote. “While one important aspect of USTR’s mission is to address unfair trading practices, the previous Administration’s dramatic expansion in the application of tariffs contributed directly to a manufacturing and agriculture recession well in advance of the [COVID-19] pandemic, and this experience illustrates the perils of an excessive reliance on tariffs. The next USTR must avoid the use of tariffs as a blunt instrument, and must avoid inaction on trade agreements as well,” he said, adding that Tai understands that.
Katharine Tai, President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress through her work as a USMCA negotiator when she was House Ways and Means Committee chief trade counsel, Nicole Bivens Collinson, Sandler Travis president-international trade and government relations, told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar Feb. 23. Tai’s Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing is set for 10 a.m. Feb. 25, and she’s going to be asked a lot of questions about the Biden administration’s posture toward the Section 301 tariffs on China, Collinson said. If all goes as well as expected with her confirmation process, Tai could be sworn in as USTR as soon as March 8, she said.