The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee said that getting Chinese shipments banned from the de minimis program is how he'd like to close out his congressional career. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., is retiring at the end of 2024. "I think we will see this moving forward, if only for the animus toward China" in Congress, he said.
National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jay Timmons said that all of his 250 members want liberalized trade, and said he didn't understand why a simple issue like the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill has been hung up in partisan conflict for three years.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that talking about tariffs more than other aspects of trade policy is, to a large degree, "a red herring," and said reducing U.S. trade policy "down to a conversation about tariffs is really unfair."
Midway through the second term of solar safeguards, imports of solar panels (modules) and cells have been climbing, and the market has almost entirely shifted to bifacial solar panels, which were at first carved out of the safeguard. Whether a decision to revoke that exclusion in 2019 was legal is still being litigated (see 2311130031 and 2401290014).
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, speaking at the University of Chicago, sidestepped a question about whether the administration would change the Section 301 tariffs, saying that although "there's a lot of drama and emotion around tariffs," the China tariffs are "the least interesting aspect of the management of our trade and economic relationship."
Trade groups representing importers of motor vehicles are asking the Interagency Autos Committee to advocate for allowing used cars made during the NAFTA years to enter duty free if those vehicles qualified for NAFTA benefits, and to make it easier to prove that cars built since July 1, 2020, qualify for USMCA tariff benefits.
Both of Georgia's senators, plus Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., urged the Biden administration to raise Section 301 tariffs on Chinese solar panels, cells and wafers. They said a Chinese panel costs more than 60% less than U.S.-made panels.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 22-28:
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Ending most favored nation status for Chinese imports -- as advocated for by the House Select Committee on China and some other China hawks in Congress -- would increase consumer prices for laptops and smart phones by more than $100, and cause purchases of those goods to fall sharply, according to a recent study commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association.