The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is holding a meeting to review Generalized System of Preferences eligibility for eight countries on Nov. 29, the USTR said in a notice. The Trade Policy GSP Subcommittee is examining whether Ecuador is acting in good faith to enforce an arbitration award, a dispute originated by Chevron (see 12092604). It is examining whether workers in Bolivia, Georgia, Iraq, Thailand and Uzbekistan have rights up to international standards, challenges brought by the AFL-CIO or another labor nonprofit (see 1511240017 and 11110124). And it is continuing to examine whether Laos should join the program. The committee is examining whether Indonesia and Uzbekistan are adequately protecting intellectual property rights. The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at 1724 F St. NW in Washington, DC.
Dennis Shea, the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization, says that China's interventions in its economy make it incompatible with the rule-based international trading system, and that more countries need to speak out about it. The U.S., the European Union and Japan are working on a common view of what the problems are with China, and what might be done to encourage changes. After that agreement is reached, they will be looking for more allies. Shea warned during a presentation Oct. 12 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that "friends of the system," as about 40 countries are known in Geneva, "want to be middle-of-the-roaders when they really need to pick a lane."
Witnesses from the United States Council for International Business, the Aluminum Association and the International Intellectual Property Alliance say that China is not living up to its World Trade Organization commitments on many fronts, even as there are some signs of movement away from practices that damage foreign competitors.
The customs chapter for the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or revised NAFTA, includes some provisions aimed at customs brokers. Those provisions, included in Article 7.21, stipulate that self-filing must be permitted and that customs broker licensing requirements must be transparent. Also, "no Party shall impose arbitrary limits to the number of ports or locations that a customs broker may operate," it says. "A Party shall allow a licensed customs broker to electronically submit a customs declaration and import documentation to the electronic systems" at "any port at which it is licensed to operate."
The U.S. will be seeking a quite different agreement with Japan than what was garnered through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on a call with reporters Sept. 26. Lighthizer, who called TPP "a very weak agreement," said he didn't want to go into a litany of all of TPP's problems, but he mentioned rules of origin. Democrats criticized the TPP because it only required 45 percent of a car's content to be made in the region (see 1601120051), and given that Mexico and Canada were signatories to the agreement, that could have been a back door way to get cars into the U.S. duty free from its neighbors that had more Chinese or European content than North American content.
The U.S., Japan and the EU plan to continue with joint efforts to lessen the effects of non-market policies on other countries though "enforcement and rule-making," the top trade officials from the those countries said in a news release. Such policies lead to overcapacity and "undermine the proper functioning of international trade, including where existing rules are not effective," said Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom, who met in New York on Sept. 25. The officials also discussed their "common view on the need for the reform of the WTO, and, with respect to its monitoring and surveillance function, agreed as a first step to co-sponsor a transparency and notification proposal for consideration at the next meeting of the WTO Council on Trade in Goods."
When Mexico was confronted with an administration that doesn't agree that free trade is good for America, it had "no option but to play ball," given the interdependence of the Mexican and U.S. economies, said Karen Antebi, economic counselor for the Trade and NAFTA Office at the Mexican Embassy. Antebi, one of the speakers at the Global Business Dialogue event Sept. 26, said Mexico wanted to reassure foreign investors, preserve economic access to the U.S. market and maintain North American competitiveness in a new NAFTA. "Clearly U.S. demands drove the negotiations," she said. "What can I say? This was a pragmatic, not a principle-driven negotiation."
The World Trade Organization is ill-equipped to handle the conduct of non-market economies, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Sept. 25, but that doesn't mean it's useless. "I personally believe it’s an important body," said Lighthizer, who was once nominated to serve on the WTO appellate body but ultimately wasn't chosen. "If we didn’t have it, we’d have to invent it." Lighthizer was speaking at the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit in New York.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is setting fiscal year 2019 country allocations for imports under tariff-rate quotas for refined sugars and “certain sugar-containing products” under U.S. Note 8 to Chapter 17 of the tariff schedule. For refined sugars, of a total of 20,344 metric tons raw value, USTR is allocating 10,300 MTRV to Canada, 2,954 MTRV to Mexico, and 7,090 MTRV of refined sugar to be administered on a first-come, first-served basis. For imports of sugar-containing products, USTR is allocating 59,250 metric tons to Canada, and 5,459 to other countries on a first-come, first-served basis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced total FY19 TRQ amounts in June (see 1806280043).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it would like the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity to be able to restore a healthy market for global steel by reducing excess capacity, but after a meeting Sept. 20 in Argentina of officials from countries around the world, it is not confident it's going to work. The forum began nearly two years ago.