President Donald Trump's frequent trashing of NAFTA doesn't really matter when the principals sit around the table, as they did May 11, said Mexico's Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. "President Trump has been very consistent, even before entering politics, he has had that view," Guajardo said outside the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. While he said Mexico, Canada and some in the U.S. believe the economic integration of North America has been positive, he explained: "That is not what we are negotiating. We are not negotiating views. We are negotiating realities. We do believe, and that is something we agree with President Trump, that trade agreements and public policy have to be aware of how you have distortions in the system. And you have to accommodate the public policy to help those that feel displaced for trade. In that sense, these are new times for policymakers."
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.
Congress needs to be notified by May 17 of a deal for updating NAFTA in order to vote in the lame duck session, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said during a speech at the Ripon Society. "As the author of [Trade Promotion Authority], I can tell you we have to have the paper -- not just an agreement. We have to have the paper from USTR by May 17 for us to vote on it this year, in December, in the lame duck," he said on May 9. Ryan also alluded to the U.S. position on Canadian dairy protections, and his desire that Investor-State Dispute Settlement be retained in NAFTA 2.0.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, referring to press reports that the European Union may accept quotas on steel exports, told Senate appropriators on May 10, "I think there's a reasonable chance we'll work something out," while testifying about his department's budget. Ross also suggested Canada and Mexico should not be subject to quotas. Ross is handling the EU tariff exemption, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is handling Mexico and Canada as part of the NAFTA renegotiation. Canada and Mexico import nearly as much steel from the U.S. as they sell here, Ross said. "We literally don't have enough aluminum production in our country without the support of Canada," Ross said. "They have not been dumping." He said that Canada's low cost of aluminum production is because of inexpensive energy inputs.
Echoing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that if a deal isn't reached in the next few weeks, NAFTA 2.0 won't be finished in 2018 -- but unlike the lead negotiator, Ross suggested there may be no revised agreement (see 1805010042). "If we don’t see progress soon, probably we won’t see it for quite a little while toward the end of the year, if at all," he said May 8 at an international conference.
CBP will launch a two-to-four-week pilot program of blockchain technology this fall related to NAFTA and Central America Free Trade Agreement certificate of origin processes, a CBP spokesman said. NAFTA and CAFTA origin procedures were chosen for the pilot because it's an instance where CBP needs to reach further back into the supply chain than just the exporter and can "message multiple partners via blockchain at the same time." It was also appealing because it has a small, defined scope with potential for reducing paper processes, he said.
Without calling out President Donald Trump by name, both Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Undersecretary of Agriculture for Trade Ted McKinney criticized his approach of describing trade with friends as them taking advantage of the U.S. and stealing its jobs and wealth (see 1803300013). Sasse, a longtime critic of Trump and ardent free-trader, said good neighbors see trade as positive. "If you understand trade is a win-win, you don't talk about it as a zero-sum game," he said. Washington is talking about trade deals as if they were real-estate transactions, which are zero-sum, while trade enriches both parties as they each produce more according to their comparative advantage, Sasse said. "NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for the U.S. and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Mexico and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Canada," he told an international conference May 8.
The process for importers to get product exclusions from Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum items is too slow, and too burdensome, according to 39 members of the House of Representatives, from both parties, who have suggestions for how to change it. Their letter, sent May 7 to the Department of Commerce, says that retroactive relief from tariffs should date back to the date of submission, not the date of posting, unless the submission was not initially complete. In that case, the lawmakers say, the refund should be from the date the submission was complete, rather than the date it was publicly posted.
Industry and government witnesses told Congress that using blockchain markers could help make shipping more efficient and make fraud more difficult. But the lack of an international standard so far makes implementing a system difficult, they told members conducting a joint hearing on the technology's use in international trade.
The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that his replies on how the department weighed the issues before recommending Section 232 tariffs were incomplete -- and said that if his next letter isn't an improvement, the committee may have to consider compelling his testimony. The letter, sent May 3, gave Ross two weeks to reply. "Clearly, these tariffs will have a much more far-reaching effect on downstream industries and consumer prices than explained in your response," Senators Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., wrote. They said Ross failed to provide detailed cost-benefit analyses on the tariffs' effects, or analyses of prior tariffs' effects on downstream industries or prices. They also said he declined to say how the agency is going to measure success of the tariffs.
The U.S. has asked China to reduce the bilateral trade deficit by $200 billion by the end of 2020, according to an eight-point list of demands that leaked to journalists during two days of trade talks in Beijing. The Wall Street Journal has reported that in addition to expected positions on intellectual property, investment barriers in China, forced tech transfer, and subsidies to high-tech firms, the document also asked China to agree not to retaliate against U.S. farmers.