Automakers, chipmakers and broad business groups asked the Bureau of Industry and Security to give their industries more time to adjust to new requirements to move supply chains out of China and report on what companies are in their connected vehicle supply chains.
CBP will bolster a number of existing initiatives in the coming months aimed at preventing the import of products made with forced labor, said Katie Woodson, assistant director within the operations and forced labor divisions of CBP's Office of Trade, during a panel on forced labor at last week's Western Cargo Conference.
The Aluminum Association is pleased by the hike in Section 301 tariffs on aluminum products -- even though it applies to more products than it wishes were covered -- and says Mexico's reporting is helping with trade remedies covering Chinese, Russian and Belarussian steel.
Canada is studying several policy and legislative options to strengthen its forced labor enforcement, including one that could establish new import traceability requirements for certain goods and another that could require importers to pay all fees associated with imports detained for forced labor.
Officials from Squire Patton Boggs said that if Donald Trump returns to the presidency, a 10% tariff or higher on a vast swath of imports could come very quickly, but what wouldn't be subject to the tariffs is not yet clear.
Donald Trump, in a lengthy interview with Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, tripled down on his tariff policy, calling the word tariff "the most beautiful word in the dictionary," and saying that his plan of a 10% tariff on all non-Chinese imports is not nearly enough to reverse factory closures.
The strong differences in tariff and immigration policies whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the election made it difficult for a think tank's economic outlook, but Alejandro Werner, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that Mexico will have a slow-down in foreign investment over the next couple of years because of "the uncertainty associated with the continuation of the USMCA regardless of who wins the election."
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Former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Bárcena said that she has been told that the U.S. will not comply with the panel ruling that said that rollup was understood to be part of the automotive rule of origin (see 2403070067), and she said that is undermining USMCA. She said that's because both the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting for the political support of the United Autoworkers and Teamsters. (The autoworkers' union characterizes rollup as watering down the requirement for North American content in vehicles).
Virginia Lenahan was named the chief international trade counsel on the Senate Finance Committee’s majority staff, committee Chair Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announced in an Oct. 3 emailed news release. Since joining the committee in 2019 as a trade counsel, Lenahan has worked on issues related to USMCA, the Inflation Reduction Act and more.