The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending by three months 77 COVID-19 related tariff exclusions as well as the 352 Section 301 exclusions that were restored in March 2022. Both sets of exclusions, which were to expire at the end of September, will last through Dec. 31.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending 77 COVID-19-related tariff exclusions as well as the 352 Section 301 exclusions that were restored in March 2022. Both sets of exclusions, which were to expire at the end of September, will last through Dec. 31.
Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
Market and geopolitical risk analysts said everything has gone wrong, undermining supply chain reliability over the last several years, and businesses are creating redundancy but are still anxious about the additional costs that entails.
Analysts from the Tax Foundation and from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that hiking tariffs on all imports by 10% would not boost domestic manufacturing, with CSIS's Bill Reinsch noting "you would be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks they make any sense."
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, after meeting with China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, said the two countries will set up a commercial issues working group that will include both government officials and business representatives "to seek solutions on trade and investment issues and to advance U.S. commercial interests in China."
Taiwan is requiring a certificate of origin and customs approval before certain Chinese-origin chipmaking equipment can be shipped to the U.S. The requirement will apply to shipments of certain “machine tools operated by laser processes, of a kind used solely or principally for the manufacture of printed circuits, printed circuit assemblies, parts” or “parts of automatic data processing machines,” Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade announced this month.
The Timber Working Group, a structure established in 2021 instead of tariffs after a Section 301 investigation on Vietnamese trading practices, discussed how Vietnam is keeping confiscated timber out of the commercial supply chain, how Vietnam verifies the legality of domestically harvested timber, and how Vietnam is "working with high-risk source countries to improve customs enforcement at the border and law enforcement collaboration."
An expert on China's electric vehicle manufacturing praised the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives to build U.S. advanced battery manufacturing capacity but told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that completely cutting China out of that sector's supply chain is impractical. The Zero Emissions Transportation Association has made similar arguments (see 2208040045); the Treasury Department has not yet said how the "country of concern" restrictions for EV tax credits will be applied. However, Treasury allows leased cars to avoid all the localization rules.