Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the leader on a push to revoke the emergency underlying 25% tariffs on many Canadian goods and 10% tariffs on Canadian energy, said his resolution will get a vote on April 1.
Customs attorney Dan Ujczo, who has contacts in the White House as well as clients who are major automakers, said he thinks the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico over migration and fentanyl will continue past April 2, and will be stacked with auto tariffs and the reciprocal levies.
Reactions from across the U.S. automotive industry and the world poured in after President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on all imports of automobiles beginning April 3.
Customs attorney Dan Ujczo, speaking to an audience of automotive industry compliance officials hosted by the Automotive Industry Action Group, cautioned that if the listeners' companies are exporting auto parts from Mexico or Canada, they shouldn't assume that they have until May 3 before 25% tariffs are going to bite. (This is assuming the parts currently qualify for USMCA and therefore are avoiding the 25% tariffs imposed on exports from those countries under the guise of a national emergency on fentanyl smuggling and migration.)
As the U.S., Mexico and Canada are poised to renegotiate the free trade agreement known as USMCA among the three countries, expect the U.S. to review the rules of origin and "tighten them" in favor of requiring a higher percentage of North American content, trade attorneys with Miller and Chevalier said on a March 25 webinar sponsored by public accounting firm Forvis Mazars.
President Donald Trump said at the White House that tariffs on imported autos, now at 2.5%, will go to 25%. He then signed an executive order, but that order was not yet posted online. The staffer who presented that order said the 25% tariff would be added to existing tariffs.
At a hearing largely focused on the need to get other countries to lower their tariffs, sanitary and phytosanitary barriers, and discriminatory tariffs on services exports, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee focused on Trump's tariff hikes.
Wisconsin man Gary Barnes doesn't have constitutional or prudential standing to challenge the president's right to impose tariffs, the U.S. argued in a March 21 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. The government claimed that Barnes failed to "allege a particularized and concrete injury to himself," and instead claimed that "unidentified American consumers more generally" will be harmed by the supposed constitutional violations the president commits when imposing tariffs (Gary Barnes v. United States, CIT # 25-00043).
Groups that represent importers, carriers and ports are asking the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to rethink its remedies for Chinese dominance in shipbuilding, arguing that imposing fees on most ships bringing imports to U.S. ports will drive up prices, increase port congestion and devastate the business of smaller ports.
National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones Chair Shannon Fura, a founder of Chicago law firm Page Fura, said the language in President Donald Trump's recent executive orders creating new tariffs, which say that goods must pay tariffs before entering FTZs, "are handcuffing some of the benefits" that FTZs are designed to provide.