White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will be meeting with some top Chinese officials March 18, but the trade war will not be front and center, he told reporters at a White House press conference March 12. A reporter asked what China would have to do for the U.S. to reduce or lift tariffs, or loosen export controls. “I don’t expect that, for example, the phase one trade deal is going to be a major topic of conversation next week,” Sullivan said; instead, it will be more about geopolitical issues and human rights, not details on tariffs and export controls. “But we will communicate that the United States is going to take steps, in terms of what we do on technology, to ensure that our technology is not being used in ways that are inimical to our values or adverse to our security. We will communicate that message at a broad level,” he said. He added that before the U.S. can begin negotiating on trade, there's more work to do with allies, “to come up with a common approach, a joint approach, before we go sit down point by point with the Chinese government on these issues.”

President Joe Biden signed a Feb. 24 executive order to address supply chain shortages of semiconductor chips, personal protective equipment, medicine and other critical goods. The order calls for a 100-day review of U.S. supply chains to pinpoint “vulnerabilities” impacting a range of goods, including certain pharmaceutical products, critical minerals such as rare earths, semiconductors and large-capacity batteries. The order also calls for a one-year review that will examine issues in a broader set of U.S. supply chains, including those impacting the defense industrial base, the public health base, the information and communications technology sector base, the energy sector industrial base, the transportation industrial base and the agricultural sector. The text of the order was not available as of press time.

President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two hours, underscoring “his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices,” as well as human rights abuses in Xinjiang, according to a White House readout of the Feb. 10 call. In comments to reporters Feb. 11, he said it was a “good conversation.”

The Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, which includes a number of machining trade groups, a construction trade group and others, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden Feb. 10 to ask him to lift Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. “The Trump steel tariffs have hurt small, family-owned manufacturers and the communities in which they built their businesses, while fracturing relations with overseas trading partners and spurring a frenzy of retaliatory trade measures -- with little to nothing to show for it at home,” the letter said. The coalition represents more than 30,000 companies in manufacturing and downstream supply chains. “More than 6.2 million Americans work in industries that use steel, while the steel industry itself directly employs only 140,000 workers,” it said, referring to tallies before the COVID-19 pandemic. “The data on employment in steel and aluminum production shows a muted benefit of approximately 1,000 more jobs. By comparison, a study by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors indicated that increased input costs due to the tariffs are associated with 75,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector.”

More than 70 trade groups from Europe and the U.S. asked President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to remove or suspend tariffs on goods outside of aerospace and steel and aluminum that have been targets in those trade disputes. “Suspending these tariffs is urgently needed to address the economic harms our industries are currently facing and will also be a positive step to help re-establish a cooperative Trans Atlantic trading relationship,” they wrote in a Jan. 25 letter. COVID-19-related shutdowns made 2020 a tough year for business, they said, and “the ongoing EU-U.S. trade disputes and additional tariffs which continue to plague Trans-Atlantic trade have made a bad situation worse.” Signers include food, wine and spirits interests on both sides of the Atlantic; European tool, cosmetics and perfume industries; and a broad array of U.S. trade groups, among them the American Chemistry Council, the National Retail Federation, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, and the American Association of Port Authorities.

The White House is freezing rules that have been published, but have not taken effect, as well as proposed rulemaking and interim final rules, for 60 days from Jan. 20, so that the new administration can review the policies. The Trump administration issued a similar order in 2017 (see 1701230031), as did previous administrations.

The United Steelworkers, the Steel Manufacturers Association, the American Iron and Steel Institute and two other trade groups wrote to President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 11, telling him that weakening or removing 25% tariffs and quotas on imported steel “before major steel producing countries eliminate their overcapacity and the subsidies and other trade-distorting policies that have fueled the steel crisis will only invite a new surge in imports with devastating effects to domestic steel producers and their workers.” The letter said the Section 232 tariffs allowed idled mills to reopen and laid-off workers to regain their jobs. “Continuation of the tariffs and quotas is essential to ensuring the viability of the domestic steel industry in the face of ... massive and growing excess steel capacity,” they said, pointing to China, Vietnam and Turkey as countries that did not slow down steel production during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced recession.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer called others to join him in condemning of the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol. Lighthizer, in a signed tweet Jan. 6, said: “All patriotic Americans should condemn the violence we saw at our Capitol today. This is inconsistent with our democracy and our most cherished values.”

Wendy Cutler, the lead negotiator for the Trans Pacific Partnership, and James Green, who was the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's senior official in China, are questioning whether a new European Union-China investment agreement will undercut the united front President-elect Joe Biden wants on Chinese economic abuses.

President Donald Trump has returned The Democratic Republic of the Congo to African Growth and Opportunity Act eligibility, the White House announced late Dec. 22. The changes will take effect Jan. 1, 2021, when the DRC will again be one of the lesser developed beneficiaries. The proclamation said that the DRC has been out of AGOA for 10 years. The proclamation also made official the promised tariff benefits for a handful of European Union products in exchange for the EU lowering tariffs on U.S. lobsters (see 2008210028).