U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard many bipartisan complaints about the pain of both Section 301 tariffs and Europe's retaliatory tariffs in response to steel tariffs, but stood her ground on both during a hearing in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Section 301 (too broad)
At a webinar on U.S.-Vietnam economic relations, Ambassador Ha Kim Ngoc said Vietnam is working to narrow the trade deficit with the U.S., whether by buying more American agricultural exports or encouraging Vietnamese businesses to open factories in the U.S. "I don’t think we can solve the problem overnight, with COVID-19 and the increased demand of the goods from Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam," he said April 27.
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PricewaterhouseCoopers has been cautioning its clients not to get their hopes up about a reversal of sections 232 and 301 tariffs with the new administration, and Scott McCandless, a principal in the firm's tax policy services group, also sought to manage expectations for trade policy action in Congress in 2021. McCandless, speaking to a webinar audience April 27, said that while forced labor is a hot issue right now, and CBP “is on a more active footing” on forced labor, he doesn't believe that legislation that would create a rebuttable presumption of forced labor in Xinjiang is going to pass this year. “I doubt that moves forward,” he said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced a technical correction that allows refunds for products exported after the tariffs were hiked from 10% to 25% but on the water at the time the increase was announced. The notice, set for Federal Register publication April 26, says goods that left China before May 10, 2019, and entered the U.S. before June 15, 2019, and are covered by a Section 301 exclusion, are now excluded.
A witness at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on China and trade competitiveness told senators that if the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill and his company's Section 301 exclusion aren't granted retroactively, Element Electronics would be forced to move production out of the U.S.
Thirty Republicans, led by Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, and seven Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Carper of Del., asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to renew expired Section 301 exclusions. “Some inputs for American manufacturers and small businesses remain unavailable outside of China,” the letter, sent April 21, said. The senators, joined by independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, said expiring exclusions should also be renewed, to give companies time to modify their supply chains. They also said they hoped the office different would reopen applications for exclusions. “Such a process should emphasize transparency, speed, consistency, and fairness, and should acknowledge both the practical realities of global value chains and the broader aim of supply chain diversification,” they wrote.
The origin of electric vehicle motors and the applicability of Section 301 tariffs depends on where the two most important components of the engine are made, said CBP in a recently released ruling. In response to a country of origin ruling request from LG Electronics, CBP considered multiple manufacturing scenarios for the motors.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of April 12-18:
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