China could and should be buying more U.S. products, according to a letter Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, asking him what he's intending to do about it. Scott cited research from the Peterson Institute for International Economics that shows China, through April 2020, has purchased roughly 45 percent of what it promised, if purchases were to build at the same pace through the remainder of this year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named two labor activists to the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board: Cathy Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO international department, and Fred Ross, founder of Neighbor to Neighbor, a grassroots labor rights advocacy group. The 12-member board, established under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, will monitor Mexico's implementation of its labor law revisions. The Senate and House majority and minority leaders will each appoint two members, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's Labor Advisory Committee will select four. Members serve six-year terms.
Clete Willems, former White House deputy assistant to the president for international economics, believes the U.S. must convince allies to present a unified front to China on industrial subsidies, censorship and cybersecurity issues. Willems, who is now a lobbyist with Akin Gump, was speaking during a June 12 online program of the Asia Society. When it's just the U.S. arguing for reforms, he said, China can portray it as the U.S. trying to keep China down. But, he said, it might be possible to get China to change, “if we are able to portray them as an international outlier, which I think they are.”
Rep. Suzan DelBene, a House Ways and Means Committee member who also leads on trade in the New Democrats, said she's worried that the participation of “so many countries” at the World Trade Organization in e-commerce talks -- including China -- will mean that the result will not be a high-standard agreement.
U.S.-China technology competition and the Trump administration’s restrictions on Huawei have likely dashed the prospects of a phase two trade deal, China experts said. The experts also agreed that the phase one purchase agreements are unlikely to be met, even as the U.S. trade representative continues to tout progress on Chinese purchase commitments (see 2005210036).
Reports that China would be slowing or stopping its purchases of soybeans because of U.S. action over Hong Kong (see 2006010044) are inaccurate, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said. Lighthizer, who was speaking to the Economic Club of New York, Washington and Chicago by video on June 4, said China made $185 million worth of U.S. soybean purchases since that story was published. He said that coverage of the trade agreement frequently focuses on the purchase promises and neglects the structural reforms that were pledged, but that both tracks have been going well in the three months since the deal went into effect. “You’ll know what the score is before too long,” he said.
The president of the American Automotive Policy Council, former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, said the release of the uniform regulations in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was so recent that it's too early “to give a definitive view of what needs to be clarified,” or is missing. But he said one of the really important asks of the automotive industry was granted -- an acknowledgement that importers and exporters would need the rest of the year to be ready for full compliance.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said some farmers he spoke to in his home state of Iowa told him they're concerned about trade with China. Grassley told such questioners he's not worried about the trade agreement.
At a time that the World Trade Organization is under stress -- its appellate body disbanded, and its director general quitting before his term is up -- member countries are also resisting moving proceedings online. Nigel Cory, associate director of trade policy for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said other groups have “shifted these critical high-level meetings online,” but the WTO canceled its June ministerial meeting. Cory said that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is negotiating online on the matter of digital taxes, so it is showing it can be done.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said its negotiators will seek to make things easier for express shippers in Kenya, will seek to get Kenya to agree to basing its phytosanitary rules on science, and “secure comprehensive duty-free market access for U.S. industrial goods” as it works towards a free-trade agreement with that country.