The U.S. needs to increase “engagement” with China to reach a trade deal, said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., adding that the U.S. has stronger, not weaker, trade relationships with its allies since President Donald Trump became president.
Democrats in the House insisted that their ideas about how to verify compliance with Mexico's labor laws is a balanced one that respects their sovereignty. Chief Mexican negotiator on USMCA, Jesus Seade, wrote a column published Dec. 4 that said, in Spanish, that there will be no “transnational inspectors,” even though the U.S. has pushed so much for that approach. "If the U.S. stops insisting on the pair of unacceptable ideas that the [Mexican trade group CCE] statement yesterday speaks of, we can soon have a treaty, and a very good treaty," he wrote (see 1912030033). He said that the state-to-state dispute settlement system, broken in NAFTA, "will now be 100% repaired, for all topics and sectors under the treaty."
Exactly how the U.S. Trade Representative has agreed to change the 10-year biologics exclusivity period in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is unclear, but insiders are saying it will be less favorable to the pharmaceutical industry.
The Dec. 3 House passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 will have serious repercussions for U.S.-China trade talks if the bill becomes law, a China Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson threatened on Dec. 4. H.R. 649 and the companion S. 178 that cleared the Senate in September demand tough U.S. sanctions on China over reports of government-run detention centers imprisoning millions of Muslim-minority Chinese citizens in Xinjiang.
Newly recommended export-related initiatives (see 1912020048), including an effort by CBP to reduce minor “parking ticket” violations, will better allow U.S. enforcement agencies to target serious export violators, Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee members said during a Dec. 4 meeting. CBP’s Export Modernization Working Group hopes fewer minor penalties will clear up enforcement officials to do more large-scale work. “It should help the enforcement side to have time to actually get the bad guys,” said Brenda Barnes, a COAC member and part of the EMWG.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to sanction Turkey, saying in a letter that Turkey’s purchase of Russian missile defense systems should be met with consequences. The senators said Turkey’s July purchase of Russian S-400 missile parts (see 1907150039) falls under the scope of the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act.
Two prominent Republicans questioned the suitability of switching tariffs for quotas because of currency manipulation in Brazil and Argentina, as President Donald Trump said Dec. 2 he is doing. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., the leading critic of Trump's trade policy, issued a statement that night that said, “He is justifying these tariffs by citing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. This provision is exclusively meant for national security threats. Yet, the President has acknowledged that the real purpose of this action is to combat currency manipulation -- which does not pose a national security threat. Furthermore, even if this action were legitimate, the statutory window for imposing these tariffs has closed. These actions further underscore that Congress should take up my legislation that would reassert congressional authority regarding imposition of national security tariffs.”
The top negotiator for Mexico on the new NAFTA told reporters in Canada on Nov. 29, “I think we are almost there.” Jesus Seade, who was in Canada meeting with his counterparts, had been in Washington the day before Thanksgiving to talk to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer about whether Mexico could live with the edits to the new NAFTA the Democrats had asked for. Seade told reporters that the edits might be finalized “sometime in the next week,” but if not then, he said he hopes it will be before Congress leaves town for the Christmas holiday. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a speech on the Senate floor Dec. 2 that “if a deal cannot be reached by the end of this week, I do not see how USMCA can be ratified in 2019. As it is, the window of opportunity for 2019 is extremely tight.”
As CBP prepares to launch its electronic export manifest system, the agency should increase collaboration with stakeholders, provide clear guidelines for regulators and eliminate redundant data requirements, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee’s Export Modernization Working Group said in proposed recommendations. The recommendations were released this month ahead of COAC’s Dec. 4 public meeting.
The recently released annual reports to Congress on reviews conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. in 2016 and 2017 (see 1911220060) show an “upward trend” in the number of notifications filed with CFIUS, according to a Nov. 26 post by Thompson Hine. In particular, voluntary notifications for filings in the finance, information and services sectors during the 2016-2017 period (see 1911220060) were particularly high, the post said. For the 2015-2017 period, acquisitions involving Chinese investors accounted for the largest number of CFIUS notices -- about 26 percent of all notices, the post said. In addition, the use of “mitigating measures to obtain CFIUS approval is increasing,” the law firm said. Mitigating agreements -- or agreements put in place by CFIUS agencies that “feel that” certain conditions must be met to ensure compliance and to mitigate potential risk to U.S. national security -- were involved in 18 transactions in 2016 and jumped to 29 transactions in 2017, the post said.