International Trade Commissioners grappled with how they should fulfill the administration's request for a report on the export competitiveness of the Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian, Indonesian and Pakistani apparel sectors over the last 11 years -- is it to uncover how those countries' successes could offer lessons to other developing countries that want to industrialize? Is the success of Bangladesh, which is near to crossing the threshold into a middle-income country largely on the strength of its garment sector, a country with an "unnatural and unfair advantage," because of its suppression of unions and wages, as the AFL-CIO's Eric Gottwald asserted?
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
House Ways and Means Subcommitee Chair Mike Kelly, R-Pa., warned that the committee would not "stand by idly and watch the Biden administration and Treasury Department sacrifice American tax dollars for political gain." Kelly, who was holding a hearing this week on the implications of international negotiations on extra-territorial taxes, including digital services taxes, said the draft deal at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will disadvantage U.S. firms.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she will be bringing up China's overproduction of electric vehicles as part of the 2026 USMCA review process, implying that she expects Mexico to reject Chinese investment in its auto manufacturing sector.
Both co-sponsors of a bill to restrict Chinese goods from de minimis eligibility said that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who has the power to advance the bill, is interested in marking up the bill.
A bipartisan bill has been introduced that would set country-by-country de minimis levels, instruct the administration to reconsider U.S. tariffs "with the focus on the principle of reciprocity" for most favored nation rates, and open a dialogue with Mexico and Canada on allowing Costa Rica and Uruguay to join USMCA.
Funding for the next seven months for the trade-related divisions of the Commerce Department will be down slightly, though fees may more than make up the difference at the International Trade Administration, if projections are accurate. These are considerations as Congress eyes finalizing an appropriations bill by the end of the workweek.
House Republican conservatives want to end Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and have introduced a bill that urges the U.S. trade representative to negotiate free trade agreements with Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the U.K. so that importers can have alternatives to Chinese suppliers at a lower cost.
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said that he thinks a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program can get through Congress in the next three months.
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commissioner Kimberly Glas, calling e-commerce "a superhighway of the Wild West," asked witnesses at a hearing on Chinese exports and product safety if de minimis is a major contributor to unsafe products.
President Joe Biden said a regulatory effort from the Commerce Department to curtail the use of software, sensors and cameras in automobiles made by Chinese firms is one of the actions the administration is taking "to make sure the future of the auto industry will be made here in America with American workers."