Americans for Free Trade is urging the House to pass legislation that mirrors the Senate Trade Act of 2021, especially the language that asks the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to reinstate the Section 301 exclusion process. CBP has collected more than $92 billion in tariffs on Chinese products since the trade war began, the business coalition “united against tariffs” said in a June 30 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users said the U.S. negotiators aiming to end Section 232 tariffs by addressing steel overcapacity should listen to U.S. industrial users of the metals.

April imports to the U.S. of laptops, tablets and smartphones were flat or marginally lower compared with March, but double digits higher than in April 2020, the first full month of COVID-19 lockdowns, according to Census data accessed June 9 through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb tool.

Metal-using and other trade associations, including the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, the American Apparel and Footwear Association and the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, sent a letter June 9 to President Joe Biden asking him to expedite discussions with the European Union to address global steel and aluminum overcapacity so the Section 232 tariffs can be lifted as soon as possible. The 33 trade groups wrote, "These tariffs and quotas continue to hurt small, family-owned businesses and the communities in which they built their companies, while fracturing relations with overseas trading partners and spurring a frenzy of retaliatory trade measures against both related and unrelated industries."

AIT Worldwide Logistics acquired Multimodal International, an Illinois-based U.S. customs broker, the companies said in a June 3 news release. Multimodal is "known for their deep industrial vertical knowledge, particularly in the automotive and chemical markets -- two sectors where AIT is strategically expanding," AIT Chief Information Officer Ray Fennelly said. "Bringing these experts into the AIT customs brokerage team adds immediate value for our customers in those industries, and many others.” Terms of the deal weren't released.

Strong demand contributed to Costco’s 38.2% e-commerce sales increase for the fiscal third quarter ended May 9, but port delays “are continuing to have an impact,” Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said on a May 27 earnings call. “The turnaround of a container hitting the U.S., delivering its contents and being back at the U.S. port to head back overseas” has doubled to 50 days compared with a year ago, he said. “Chips shortages are impacting many items from an inflation standpoint, some items more than others,” Galanti said. “We continue to work to mitigate cost increases and supply chain delays in a variety of different ways,” mostly by “front-loading” orders of many items, he said. “The feeling is that this will continue” at least for the rest of calendar year 2021, he said. Galanti estimates that about 70% of the warehouse club’s “big and bulky” items is now being delivered through the Costco Logistics trucking fleet, he said. “Some of it was being delivered by third parties that were doing fine, but now we're doing it ourselves,” he said. Costco Logistics “is continuing to grow very handily” in fulfillment of articles for the home, including big-screen TVs, he said.

A recent Economic Policy Institute report that showed the domestic aluminum industry as thriving while the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum were in place demonstrates the continued need for the tariffs, United Steelworkers International said in a news release. "The Section 232 measures are allowing the domestic aluminum industry to regrow and add jobs," union President Tom Conway said in a statement. "This includes new investment not only in aluminum production, but downstream as well. We cannot jeopardize our fragile economic recovery by lifting them prematurely. As we continue to work toward a permanent multilateral solution for global overcapacity, we must maintain and strengthen these measures so that we can rebuild our communities and safeguard our national security. Unless and until we have a comprehensive set of solutions, the 232 national security measures should remain in place."

The Coalition for a Prosperous America says that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill lead to offshoring and a low-wage workforce in the U.S., and that the MTB is "abused by importers who lobby against policies to boost domestic production, and it conflicts with the national imperative to re-shore the industries and jobs we have lost."

Imports sustain an estimated 21.4 million net U.S. jobs, including a “net positive number” of employees in every state, said a Trade Partnership Worldwide report, “Imports Work for American Workers,” commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association, the National Retail Federation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and six other business and trade associations.

A former U.S. trade representative and a former deputy national security adviser agree that companies that do business in China are stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they will anger China if they disavow abuses in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, but could break U.S. law if they make clothes with Xinjiang cotton.