A report from Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress said that while the Federal Reserve is doing the right thing to drive down inflation, Congress should act to remove Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, and Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. "These 2018-2020 era tariffs are currently in effect on $280 billion of U.S. imports, imposing a $50 billion annual cost burden on U.S. producers and consumers that use imported goods. Estimates suggest that removing recently imposed tariffs on imports from China, steel and aluminum imports, and Canadian lumber imports could deliver a one-time inflation reduction of 1.3 percentage point," the report said. There is no mechanism for Congress to roll back the softwood lumber duties, as they are antidumping and countervailing duties. However, the U.S. used to lower the trade remedies when the cost of lumber rose above certain thresholds.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Nov. 14-20:
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.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have been fruitless, and antidumping and countervailing duty laws also are inadequate to counter the wide variety of abuses from China -- industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, discrimination against foreign sales in China, as well as enormous subsidies. "It is time for the U.S. government, ideally working with allies, to craft and implement a new set of trade defense instruments," ITIF Founder Robert Atkinson wrote in a white paper released Nov. 21.
Seventeen styles of fabrics are not excluded from 10% Section 301 duties because they do not qualify as microfibers or microdeniers, CBP said in a Sept. 8 ruling, recently released publicly.
Simon Lester, president of China Trade Monitor and WorldTradeLaw.net, said he doesn't expect any large changes in the Biden administration's trade policy following the midterm elections. In a blog post Nov. 15, Lester wrote that while the administration could look at the election results as not provoking too much of a backlash to its trade policy, it's more likely that the election cycle was favorable to Democrats, due to the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and "terrible" GOP candidates.
With the expected shift to a Republican majority in the House -- and the retirement from Congress of former Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady -- Republicans will have three choices to lead the powerful committee.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that if China has not complied with its World Trade Organization accession provisions, Congress should pass a law "to immediately suspend China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations" treatment, which would mean that Chinese imports would face higher base tariffs than from nearly all other countries. Then Congress should assess what conditions it would require to renew Chinese imports' eligibility for Most Favored Nation Tariffs, the commission said in its annual report, released Nov. 15.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Oct. 31 - Nov. 6 and Nov. 7-13:
Of all the outstanding trade policy options -- new trade promotion authority, requiring Section 301 exclusions, revisions to antidumping law and a customs modernization law -- the head of government relations at Flexport said he thinks customs modernization is the most likely to pass. "I think we are coming on the cusp of something," Darien Flowers said, and said he thinks a bill will be enacted before 2025. Flowers once worked for Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who is leading the bill, though more recently he served on the minority staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.