The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is proposing to revise its upcoming Section 301 actions on the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, including fees for vehicle carriers and restrictions on maritime transport services.
Expert witnesses testified that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule code needs to be refined so that different sizes of semiconductor chips have their own numbers, and, more radically, suggested that the best way to mitigate overdependence on China for legacy chips is to require importers to report where the chips were designed and fabricated within products they are importing.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised unspecified retaliatory measures against the U.S. for doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum, unless a deal is struck between the two countries before next week.
President Donald Trump got the phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping he'd been seeking, and Trump wrote on social media that "there should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products."
Joseph Barloon, who was a general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during Donald Trump's first term, told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that he believes in rules-based trade.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 3 stayed its decision finding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't provide for tariffs, pending the government's appeal of the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Judge Rudolph Contreras said a stay is "appropriate to protect the President’s ability to identify and respond to threats to the U.S. economy and national security" (Learning Resources v. Trump, D.D.C. # 25-01248).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has extended by three months certain current exclusions to its Section 301 investigation related to U.S. trade with China.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments on whether any act, policy or practice relating to drug prices appears "unreasonable or discriminatory," or appears to have "the effect of forcing American patients to pay for a disproportionate amount of global pharmaceutical research and development, including by suppressing the price of pharmaceutical products below fair market value in foreign countries," it said in a Federal Register notice,
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is soliciting comments on whether African countries eligible for the African Growth and Opportunity Act benefits should continue to be eligible for AGOA in 2026. (Congress has to renew AGOA before then, as the whole program expires at the end of September.)
President Donald Trump said at a press conference in the Oval Office that the U.S. would no longer have an economically viable country if higher courts uphold the rulings from the Court of International Trade and a U.S. district court that he doesn't have unbounded power to hike tariffs under an emergency statute.