The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative approved multiple categories of solar cells for exclusion from the Section 201 safeguards, it said in a notice. Seven new categories of solar cells with specific wattages, size and other characteristics will be excluded from the safeguard measures starting Sept. 19, it said. The agency received a total of 48 product exclusion requests, it said. The Section 201 tariffs were announced at the beginning of the year on solar cells and residential washing machines (see 1801230052). An exemption was "specifically written" for SunPower's "solar cells and modules based on copper-plated [interdigitated back contact (IBC)] technology," a Bank of America stock analyst said in a Sept. 18 research report. "The exemption is not applied retroactively, likely maintaining" about $68 million in "negative impact experienced in 2018 with tariffs already paid on imported modules."
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a notice with instructions for making product exclusion requests for the second tranche of Section 301 tariffs that took effect Aug. 23. Granted requests will apply for a year following publication of the exclusion determination in the Federal Register and will be effective retroactively back to Aug. 23, the notice said. The exclusions requests are due by Dec. 18 and responses to the requests "are due 14 days after the request is posted in docket number USTR-2018-0032" on regulations.gov, USTR said. "Any replies to responses to an exclusion request are due the later of 7 days after the close of the 14 day response period, or 7 days after the posting of a response." The instructions are similar to the USTR's instructions for exclusion requests from the first batch of Section 301 tariffs (see 1807160013).
Most of the former U.S. trade representatives on a panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies agreed that a multilateral approach with China would have been better than tariffs, that the World Trade Organization could have been used to good effect, and that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have made a difference. But Susan Schwab, who was a USTR during the George W. Bush administration, disagreed with much of that conventional wisdom. "From 2005 onward, we were seeing bad behavior and backtracking on the part of China, and we tried to get China's attention on a whole lot of issues that the current administration is talking about ... and we weren't able to get their attention. And we weren't able to get Europe and Japan to help us even though quietly Europe and Japan were talking about this.
Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Dennis Shea will lead the U.S. delegation to the G-20 Trade and Investment Ministerial meeting in Argentina Sept. 14. An announcement from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that Shea "will promote President [Donald] Trump’s priorities for free, fair and reciprocal trade, particularly the need to address non-market oriented policies."
Canada continues to avoid characterizing how close it is to reaching an agreement on NAFTA with the U.S., and Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland sought to both downplay the significance of her return to Washington for just one day and to point to it as a sign of her deep commitment to reaching a deal.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative "will begin consultations with Congress pursuant to Trade Promotion Authority to facilitate negotiations on longer-term outcomes" with the EU, the office said in a news release. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom met on Sept. 10 and discussed several issues raised by President Donald Trump during a July press conference (see 1807250031), the agency said. Lighthizer and Malmstrom will meet again this month, and then in October, "professional staff will hold further discussions on identifying and reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade," USTR said. "Ministers will then meet in November to finalize outcomes in a number of areas. Specifically, we hope for an early harvest in the area of technical barriers to trade. We look forward to each party pursuing their domestic processes for negotiating mandates."
Even as President Donald Trump and a top Mexican negotiator suggest that NAFTA could be resolved on Sept. 8, Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland continued to sidestep questions about how close Canada is to arriving at a deal. "My negotiating counterparty is Ambassador [Robert] Lighthizer. I think that question is really to the president," she said. "We're making progress."
Though the vast majority of the nearly 3,000 comments in docket USTR-2018-0026 opposed a third tranche of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods, Veeco Instruments supports the proposed duties on “indicator panels incorporating LCDs or LEDs” imported from China under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule’s 8531.20.00 subheading, the company said in Aug. 30 comments posted in the docket. Veeco also wants U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to impose duties on six more tariffs lines of LED-related goods not currently proposed in the third tranche, the company said in a document heavily redacted to hide “business confidential” information. The eight-page document also contained roughly two dozen redactions to hide Veeco's identity, except for one reference by name to Veeco that apparently slipped through. A revised document later posted in the docket deleted that one Veeco reference and replaced the previous document, which is now listed in the docket as "restricted to show metadata only because it contains confidential business information data." The publicly traded Veeco did about $485 million in 2017 revenue, mainly through the sales of semiconductor process equipment used to produce LEDs and other components, said the company’s most recent 10-K at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Imposing tariffs on LEDs and products containing them will “ensure that Chinese producers” positioned to manufacture those products “will not benefit from having unfettered access to the U.S. market,” Veeco said. The tariffs also “will encourage U.S. consumers to purchase such products from other sources that do not rely on stolen intellectual property to make these products,” it said. Luke Meisner, the Schagrin Associates lawyer who filed the comments on his client’s behalf, declined to comment.
The "agreed outcomes" to the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement were published by the U.S. Trade Representative on Labor Day, and they lay out the language changes put in place to protect the U.S. light truck market from Korean imports for another 20 years. In the original KORUS, agreed to in 2011, the 25 percent tariff on light trucks would last until 2021. In the renegotiated KORUS, they last through 2041. "The publication of the text of the agreed outcomes follows the completion in mid-August of U.S. domestic consultation procedures," said the USTR in a news release. "Korea will now initiate the next step in its own domestic procedures, which is to open for public comment the provisional Korean translations of the outcomes to amend the KORUS Agreement."
No records exist at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative explaining how and why the agency removed finished TVs from China from the first tranche of Section 301 tariffs imposed July 6 (see 1806150003), USTR said in an email on Aug. 30. A Freedom of Information Act request submitted Aug. 6 asked for copies of all emails, reports and any other physical or electronic documentation shared among the 17 members of the interagency Section 301 committee charged with deciding which tariffs would stay and which would go from the list released April 6. The request, submitted by a sister publication to International Trade Today, sought documents that would shed light on the deliberations among the committee members that led the agency to spare TVs from the 25 percent tariffs. The agency did an automated search of the records stash of four USTR officials who serve on the committee using an “eDiscovery tool,” and also did a “manual search,” but found no materials that were “responsive” to our FOIA request, it said. The four officials whose records the agency said it searched included: Arthur Tsao, assistant general counsel and lead attorney in the Section 301 tariffs proceedings; Julia Howe, director-China; William Busis, deputy assistant USTR for monitoring and enforcement, and chairman of the Section 301 committee; and Terry McCartin, assistant USTR for China affairs.