A State Department notice declaring that all agency efforts to control international trade now constitute a "foreign affairs function" of the U.S. under the Administrative Procedure Act will ultimately be subject to the discretion of the courts, trade lawyers told us.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asked a top executive at Norsk Hydro a few weeks ago when the company would open a primary aluminum smelter.
Nicholas Lamp, academic director of international law programs at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, told an audience of lawyers at Georgetown Law School that he questioned the premise of the panel he was speaking on -- that Canada and Mexico's approaches to trade with China would influence the future of USMCA.
The EU and Canada announced retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. this week, targeting billions of dollars' worth of American exports in response to what they said were unjustified global 25% steel and aluminum duties imposed by the Trump administration. Other nations also criticized the U.S. tariffs as they mulled countermeasures of their own.
Given that more than half of imports from Canada and Mexico don't claim USMCA preferences, trade lawyers and customs experts are expecting a sharp and rapid increase in entries that claim the preference.
Vehicles that meet the USMCA rules of origin will be able to enter the U.S. duty-free again, for one month, two White House spokespeople said March 5.
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Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced the Prioritizing Offensive Agricultural Disputes and Enforcement Act, with the aim of stopping what he called unfair subsidies in India and China for their domestic rice farmers. He was joined on the bill by Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., John Boozman, R-Ark., Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
WilmerHale International Trade Practice leader David Ross told panelists on a discussion of reciprocal trade that, "contrary to some earlier expectations, there are indications that the president is not planning to do a line-by-line" tariff adjustment to match tariff levels of trading partners, but, rather, to seek to quantify the costs of higher tariffs and other policies he sees as trade barriers, and to put a single tariff rate on the country's products.
Jamieson Greer, the former chief of staff to the U.S. trade representative during the first Trump administration, was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 26, with a 56-43 vote. Five Democrats supported him, including both Michigan senators and Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and John Hickenlooper of Colorado. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted no.