House Democrats from Texas are asking Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to reverse his decision to end the tomato suspension agreement with Mexico.
Some companies and associations in the solar industry endorsed additional tariffs on Chinese polysilicon, but others expressed concern that allied countries will be hit with overlapping Section 232 tariffs on both imports of polysilicon and solar cells, in public comments to the Bureau of Industry and Security.
Thompson Hine trade lawyer Dan Ujczo, who has expertise in North American trade and, particularly, automotive trade in the USMCA region, said the way the carve-outs to 25% Section 232 tariffs have been shaking out has surprised him -- and, he believes, has surprised countries that are automaking powerhouses.
The Section 232 tariffs on copper and its derivatives appear to have been developed under a greater understanding of how U.S. manufacturing works, according to trade expert Cindy Allen, who appeared on an Aug. 1 "Simply Trade" podcast episode to discuss the numerous U.S. trade actions that occurred last week.
Now that the White House appears to have given more direction on its trade and tariff actions, more companies may transition from a wait-and-see approach to more specific courses of action, trade experts with KPMG said during a July 31 webinar on tariffs and trade complexities.
The scope of the Section 232 copper tariffs is narrower than was expected, as the 50% rate only applies to semi-finished copper products, such as copper pipes, wires, rods, sheets, and tubes, and products that use a lot of copper, such as pipe fittings, cables, connector and electrical components -- not to copper ores, concentrates, mattes, cathodes, anodes, or copper scrap.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 sustained the Commerce Department's non-market economy policy in antidumping duty proceedings despite the fact that the agency hadn't codified the policy in its regulations at the time the underlying review was challenged. Judges Todd Hughes, William Bryson and Leonard Stark said the Federal Circuit has a long line of cases upholding the policy and that, even if those cases didn't exist, Commerce didn't need to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to implement the policy.
A Government Accountability Office report released July 23 recommends that the Department of Transportation office handling multimodal freight infrastructure get better at identifying infrastructure needs and policy changes that affect the air cargo movements.
The U.S. government's "newfound" theory of jurisdiction in two importers' case against the legality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is "both convoluted and wrong," the importers, Learning Resources and Hand2Mind, argued in a reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Learning Resources v. Donald J. Trump, D.C. Cir. # 25-5202).
Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., a lead sponsor of the Prevent Tariff Abuse Act, has convinced 71 other Democrats to join her in clarifying that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't give a president the ability to impose quotas, tariff rate quotas or tariffs on imports.