U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she and Australia’s Trade Minister Don Farrell, meeting on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade ministers' meeting, agreed the negotiations on the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity have been constructive.

The Biden administration is using the USMCA rapid response mechanism in the case of a Goodyear factory in San Luis Potosí, arguing that the way Goodyear can ensure its tires' eligibility for tariff benefits is to grant the countrywide rubber workers' contract.

The U.S. and Taiwan completed five chapters of a trade agreement similar to the issues under discussion in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the U.S. announced late May 18.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comments in connection with its annual review of the eligibility of countries for benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, USTR said. The agency will consider, among other things, whether to restore or revoke eligibility for sub-Saharan African countries covered by AGOA. Countries found ineligible for AGOA in 2023 include Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cameroon; Equatorial Guinea (graduated from GSP; ineligible for consideration for AGOA benefits); Eritrea; Ethiopia; Guinea; Mali; Mauritania; Seychelles (graduated from GSP; ineligible for consideration for AGOA benefits); Somalia (requested consideration for AGOA benefits for the first time this year); South Sudan; Sudan (did not request designation as an AGOA beneficiary country); and Zimbabwe. USTR will hold a virtual public hearing on July 24. The deadline for requests to appear and for written comments is July 7.

President Joe Biden nominated Deborah Robinson for intellectual property enforcement coordinator for his administration, the White House said in a May 8 news release. Robinson, a lawyer, is currently head of intellectual property enforcement at Paramount Global.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comments on eligibility criteria in the definition of “specialty sugar” for the agency’s sugar tariff-rate quota regulations, it said in a notice released May 5. The agency said that while the definition of specialty sugar in a 1990 interim final rule said specialty sugar must “require no further refining, processing, or other preparation prior to consumption, other than incorporation as an ingredient in human food,” a subsequent final rule in 1996 changed the overall definition but did not specify whether that criterion was still included. It is not reflected in the Code of Federal Regulations. USTR now seeks comments on whether it should amend the definition of specialty sugar to reflect the criterion. Comments are due July 7.

The U.S. readout of the meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Canada's trade minister, Mary Ng, mentioned Canada's proposed digital services tax. "Ambassador Tai expressed her hope that the United States and Canada could work together on this issue that could unfairly impact U.S. businesses," it said.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that after her first visit to Brazil, she was struck by "a lot of synergies between the United States and Brazil." She said it also got her "thinking about ourselves as the product of an earlier version of globalization -- the colonial/imperial project."

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, speaking from Asia, where she had just finished a round of meetings with Philippine and Japanese officials, said the U.S.-China trade war did not come up in her meetings, as these visits focused much more on the bilateral trade and economic relationship.

After a union vote at Unique Fabricating in Santiago de Querétaro, where workers picked an independent union, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has declared its labor concerns resolved.