Trade was barely touched on during the virtual meeting of President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, said Anna Ashton, vice president of government affairs for the U.S.-China Business Council. Ashton, who was speaking on a Nov. 23 Twitter panel hosted by Neysun Mahboubi, a research scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Contemporary China, said that follows a pattern in the administration. She said that "they are unabashedly reframing the relationship… as a competitive one," which makes her wonder where the commercial relationship fits in. The recent panel was reacting to the earlier video call (see 2111160004).
Several companies disclosed their filings with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. or updated the status of their ongoing CFIUS reviews this month. The filings describe one CFIUS notification involving a Taiwanese technology company, three CFIUS clearances, a transaction involving a U.S. email encryption company and more.
The Bureau of Industry and Security should clarify that certain hospitals affiliated with entries on the Entity List are not subject to Entity list restrictions, said Tory Tibor, global head of trade compliance for medical device company Olympus. Tibor said the clarification would help address confusion among third parties, including forwarders, about what types of entities are captured by Entity List controls.
Gloria Abraham Peralta of Costa Rica, the chair of the World Trade Organization's agriculture negotiations, sent out a revised negotiation text ahead of the Nov. 30-Dec. 3 12th Ministerial Conference, the WTO said. The revised text was circulated as part of the chair's report to the WTO's General Council Nov. 23. The new document represents a "less ambitious version" of the negotiating outcomes, the chair said, but is intended to give members as much guidance as possible for MC12. “If members can continue to demonstrate commitment, goodwill and flexibility, a successful Ministerial Conference is within reach,” Peralta said. The revised text will be presented to all WTO members at the Nov. 25 meeting of the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session.
The top Republicans on the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to "start a concrete conversation about which reforms" would address the U.S. concerns about the World Trade Organization's appellate body, so that binding dispute reform can return to Geneva. They also said that the Nov. 30-Dec. 3 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) could be an opportunity to end the paralysis at the WTO.
The Trade Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a virtual hearing Dec. 2 at 10 a.m. EST called “Supporting U.S. Workers, Businesses, and the Environment in the Face of Unfair Chinese Trade Practices." No witnesses have been announced.
Nonprofits, such as Amnesty International, Public Citizen, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Greenpeace, joined by the majority of House Democrats and 10 senators, are urging the Biden administration to push for an intellectual property waiver in the World Trade Organization for "COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests."
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing for both the House and the Senate to include a range of sanctions bills in the annual defense policy legislation, which they say would further penalize international corruption and U.S. enablers of that corruption.
World Trade Organization members agreed to include discussions on COVID-19 pandemic preparedness, climate change and plastics pollution in the work plan as part of the Triennial Review of the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement, the WTO said. Participants at the Nov. 10-12 Committee on TBT meeting also reviewed 89 specific trade concerns involving labeling, testing and product safety, the WTO said. "The Triennial Review is an opportunity to improve the work of the committee," said Elisa Olmeda, the new TBT Committee chair. "It helps members keep up with new topics and improve their work in the areas of transparency and standards setting. The review keeps us dynamic, informed and ensures a better implementation of the TBT Agreement." Environmental measures dominated the discussion, the WTO said. Issues discussed included the carbon footprint of batteries, circular economy, plastic waste management, hazardous chemical classification and vehicle emissions.
Port congestion and container issues are crippling U.S. exports of pork, dairy and other agricultural products, which could permanently lose ground to competitors in foreign markets if U.S. port problems aren’t quickly resolved, industry officials said. Speaking to a House Agriculture subcommittee this week, officials urged Congress to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act (see 2108100011) and do more to penalize carriers for leaving the U.S. with empty containers.