The acting U.S. trade representative, María Pagán, said that after two years of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, the European Union has agreed to adjust its tariff rate quotas since Great Britain and Northern Ireland are no longer in the EU. “Once implemented, this agreement will provide market access certainty for U.S. producers and exporters to the EU,” Pagán said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that now that the tariffs are suspended in the Airbus-Boeing dispute, he's interested in seeing “how do the negotiations go? I said last week that I didn’t object to taking the tariffs off if we can get a solution to this thing that’s been going on for … years.” Grassley, a Senate Finance Committee member who was speaking to reporters on a conference call March 8, said he doesn't think the Senate will vote on Katherine Tai's confirmation for U.S. trade representative this week. “But she’s surely going to be done before Easter break,” he said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative posted an official notice of the suspension of tariffs on British imports that were targeted as part of the Airbus-Boeing subsidies dispute. The press office did not respond to an inquiry March 8 about when the tariffs on European Union goods would be lifted, which is also part of the Airbus-Boeing dispute. The United Kingdom had already lifted its tariffs on U.S. exports to encourage negotiating a settlement; the EU will begin a similar suspension at some point, but did not give an effective date.
House Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., told an online audience that over the next four months, the U.S. government is going to set the stage for a trade program that supports environmental goals. Blumenauer, a longtime environmentalist, said he's not concerned that the European Union will dictate the terms of a carbon border adjustment mechanism, since its politicians have a head start. “We’ve had preliminary discussions, we’re going to have more,” he said during a webinar March 5 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on environment and trade.
The tariffs on British goods on the Airbus list will be lifted for four months to create space for settling the Airbus-Boeing dispute between the United Kingdom and U.S. The U.K. had already suspended its tariffs on American goods over Boeing subsidies on Jan. 1. That suspension will also last another four months. The tariffs on British imports were lifted immediately.
The administration needs to open up a fair, timely and transparent exclusions process for Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady said, but he doesn't know what the U.S. trade representative's timetable will be on deciding whether that will happen. He said he hopes it will be very soon. Brady, R-Texas, spoke to reporters on a conference call March 3. “One of the reasons I continue to push this administration to not simply follow through on compliance with the phase one agreement but to go further into phase two” is because once agreements are hammered out, he thinks, it will be time to begin to roll back those tariffs, he said.
The Senate Finance Committee unanimously voted March 3 to forward to the full Senate the nominations of Katherine Tai for U.S. trade representative and Wally Adeyemo for deputy treasury secretary.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said March 2 that he hasn't yet gone over Katherine Tai's written answers after her hearing but that he expects to vote for her confirmation as U.S. trade representative. Although he didn't work with Tai personally on USMCA, he said his team did so and “had nothing but good things to say about her.” Grassley said he doesn't expect to be able to tell how trade policy is going to unfold from the written answers (see 2103010026). “I think she’ll be approved a long time before we know exactly how” President Joe Biden's “administration is going to handle U.K.” negotiations, if it's going rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, “what they’re going to do in regard to China, what they’re going to do in sub-Saharan Africa, like [President Donald] Trump was starting with Kenya,” he said during a conference call with reporters. “I think you’re going to get well into the middle of the year before you see any direction.”
The Senate Finance Committee will vote March 3 on the nominations of Katherine Tai as U.S. trade representative and Wally Adeyemo as deputy treasury secretary.
In written questions to U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai, she was pressed to argue for U.S. agricultural export interests around the world, and asked how China could be moved to meet more of its promises to buy American exports, agricultural and otherwise.