It's not easy or cheap to relocate semiconductor packaging plants from China to other countries of origin to avoid tariffs, said Intel in comments posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0018 opposing the proposed 25 percent Trade Act Section 301 duties on Chinese semiconductor imports. Many tech interests argued this week for removing Chinese semiconductor imports from the tariffs list because most semiconductors the U.S. imports are made in the U.S., shipped to China for final, low-end assembly, testing and packaging (ATP), and then shipped back to the U.S. (see 1807240005). Imposing those duties would require U.S. semiconductor manufacturers to pay tariffs on their own products, they said. Though U.S. firms can limit or avoid their exposure to Chinese tariffs by moving their ATP plants elsewhere, "no rational U.S. semiconductor company is going to incur the very high costs and other risks raised by relocating an ATP facility in China with an already established ecosystem to a green field site in another country,” said Intel. It estimates it would cost $650 million to $875 million to move an ATP plant out of China, “depending on its size and where it would be relocated.” That includes the costs of constructing a new building and buying or leasing new land to build it on, hauling at least 80 percent of the equipment from the existing facility to the new one and buying new, “duplicative” equipment to “ensure continuous operation at the existing site while the new site is being built out,” said Intel. Other costs include paying for the labor “overlap” of two to three years “while the new site ramps up and the existing one winds down,” and the “incremental product freight incurred by relocating the plant,” it said. “China is our industry's biggest market and has some of our biggest customers,” it said. “These significant costs assume very limited disruption in servicing customers.”

After four months, only 266 product exclusion requests have been granted, 421 were denied, and more than 26,000 are yet to be decided, House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Dave Reichert, R-Wash., said at a hearing on the Section 232 exclusion process. He called for numerous changes to the process in his opening statement.

The chemicals industry deserves to be spared from a $16 billion tranche of Section 301 tariffs, Ed Brzytwa, the director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, said during a July 25 hearing on the tariffs. After testimony from more than a half-dozen businesses that import, manufacture or use imported chemical inputs, he explained that the U.S. chemicals industry has a cost advantage over China now because of cheap natural gas. Because China imports more than $5 billion a year in chemical compounds and plastics from the U.S., the industry's a natural target for retaliation. That -- paired with the fact that many chemical and plastic manufacturers need Chinese inputs -- means that putting chemicals on the list is doubly painful.

The Section 232 steel and aluminum product exclusion process is flat-out broken, according to House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and he said at least four aspects of the Commerce Department approach need to change. Brady, who was speaking to reporters at the Capitol on July 23, said the length of the exclusion -- now a year from the time it's granted -- should be longer. He said there should be a way to appeal a denial. If a product is excluded for one company, it should be excluded for all importers of the same product. And, he said, "we think you ought to grandfather major existing projects," such as pipelines under construction.

Tribal groups and Lifeline providers asked a court to stay FCC tribal Lifeline restrictions, pending judicial review of their challenges to an order in late 2017 (see 1711160021). The FCC decisions to prohibit resellers from receiving enhanced tribal Lifeline support and to narrow the geographic scope of tribal lands will "disconnect eligible low-income Tribal members from phone and broadband service," and were made without meaningful consultation with affected tribes, said the motion (in Pacer) Friday of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Oceti Sakowin Tribal Utility Authority, National Lifeline Association, Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless and Easy Telephone Services, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in NLA v. FCC, No. 18-1026. The Wireline Bureau July 8 denied the parties' request for an administrative stay (see 1807060011). The D.C. Circuit Friday granted (in Pacer) an unopposed revised briefing schedule on underlying petitions challenging the order, with the DOJ/FCC brief due July 23, and petitioners' reply brief due Aug. 20. At the FCC, the NLA backed a Q Link Wireless emergency petition asking the FCC to direct Universal Service Administrative Co. to implement an application programming interface for its Lifeline national verifier of consumer eligibility for the low-income USF subsidy program. Comments are due in August on the petition (see 1807120004 and 1807050046).

Tribal groups and Lifeline providers asked a court to stay FCC tribal Lifeline restrictions, pending judicial review of their challenges to an order in late 2017 (see 1711160021). The FCC decisions to prohibit resellers from receiving enhanced tribal Lifeline support and to narrow the geographic scope of tribal lands will "disconnect eligible low-income Tribal members from phone and broadband service," and were made without meaningful consultation with affected tribes, said the motion (in Pacer) Friday of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Oceti Sakowin Tribal Utility Authority, National Lifeline Association, Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless and Easy Telephone Services, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in NLA v. FCC, No. 18-1026. The Wireline Bureau July 8 denied the parties' request for an administrative stay (see 1807060011). The D.C. Circuit Friday granted (in Pacer) an unopposed revised briefing schedule on underlying petitions challenging the order, with the DOJ/FCC brief due July 23, and petitioners' reply brief due Aug. 20. At the FCC, the NLA backed a Q Link Wireless emergency petition asking the FCC to direct Universal Service Administrative Co. to implement an application programming interface for its Lifeline national verifier of consumer eligibility for the low-income USF subsidy program. Comments are due in August on the petition (see 1807120004 and 1807050046).

The barriers to a NAFTA agreement are well-known -- the sunset clause, ending investor-state dispute settlement, changes to procurement. But for Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, it's a tighter rules of origin for autos that is "the most dangerous one by far, and the most troublesome and the most paradoxical." Auto parts and autos are by far the largest part of trade between the three NAFTA countries, he said, and automotive companies, including many of his members, have consulted intensively with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on how rules of origin might be massaged to incentivize more North American content and less Asian or European content. But, he said, any change to the rules cannot "create greater restraints to move these goods back and forth" between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

In the July 5 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 52, No. 27), CBP published notices that propose to modify rulings and similar treatment for mine personnel carriers and decorative nutcrackers..

Hispasat will invest in LeoSat in a deal that they said will complement Hispasat's geostationary fleet with LeoSat's planned low earth orbit (LEO) constellation and give the Spanish satellite operator a route to new data market verticals. Pointing to a similar 2017 investment in LeoSat by Sky Perfect, LeoSat and Hispasat said Tuesday the LEO operator will work with both for their commercial and regulatory expertise and on such efforts as vendor selections for customer premise equipment and ground operations and further optimization of the satellite platform. LeoSat said launch of its constellation is expected to begin next year.

In the early hours after major news events, YouTube will start putting short previews of news in its search results that link to the full article in an effort to provide more sources and context, Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan and Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl blogged Monday. They said the Alphabet/Google affiliate will expand testing of features that make it easier to access local news via the YouTube app for TV screens, bringing it to more U.S. markets. Information from third parties such as Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica will start being displayed alongside videos "on a small number of well-established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation, like the moon landing and the Oklahoma City Bombing," wrote the two: Initial members of a related working group include Vox Media, Brazilian radio network Jovem Pan and India Today.