Ahead of a meeting of the "Three Amigos" -- the presidents of the U.S. and Mexico and the prime minister of Canada -- Jan. 9-10, business groups that advocate for North American integration said during a Jan. 6 webinar that they're hoping to see more evidence of nearshoring and using North American resources to diversify away from China.
Japan's economy minister, while acknowledging that complete decoupling is possible, said that dependence on China leaves countries open to economic coercion, broken supply chains and economic insecurity.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, introduced a bill to extend HOPE and HELP, two Haiti-specific trade preferences, even though they don't expire until 2025.
The EU is hoping for concrete input from the U.S. by year-end on changes to the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system (see 2210180006), an EU official said, adding member states are growing increasingly impatient about the U.S.’s lack of action. Sabine Weyand, the European Commission’s director-general, also said the discussions within the EU on extending WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS waiver) have become more difficult.
Importers of finished goods and manufacturing inputs told the International Trade Commission across three days of testimony that the Section 301 tariffs are damaging profit margins, and in some cases lead to layoffs. But some unions and manufacturers said the Section 301 tariffs are deserved for Chinese abuses, and with the tariffs in place, the goods they make are more competitive. The International Trade Commission is studying the efficacy of Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs, and their economic impact.
Ethiopia was exporting more than $100 million annually of apparel and textiles to the U.S. before it was ousted from the African Growth and Opportunity Act program over civil strife, and a prominent apparel firm and apparel trade group are asking that it be restored.
A recent Congressional Research Service report on the phase one deal with China notes that there has been little discussion about how to enforce what China agreed to, and how to address issues that phase one didn't touch but were highlighted in the Section 301 report.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of April 18-24:
The top trade official in the British government and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said they want to do even more trade and investment between the two countries, even as a free-trade agreement is not the end goal. Secretary of State for International Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan had hoped that the Biden administration would continue the free trade negotiations started during the Trump administration, but that has not happened. Marjorie Chorlins, who leads the U.S.-U.K. Business Council at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also spoke at the March 21 plenary in Baltimore, saying the business community strongly supports more U.S.-U.K. economic cooperation.
Almost half of the Senate's Republicans and a third of its Democrats are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to open an exclusion process for all importers of Chinese goods covered by Section 301 tariffs, and to presumptively exclude any product of which nearly all the imports are coming from China. Lead authors Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., say that if importers haven't moved out of China after years of higher tariffs, that "suggests that moving these supply chains out of China is uniquely unlikely, and that our efforts to diversify production locales and reshore manufacturing would be better spent on other products."