US Trade Representative (USTR)

Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, introduced a bill that would create a chief pharmaceutical negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and would ask USTR to investigate whether Section 301 actions should be taken against high-income countries that impose price controls on American-made pharmaceuticals. The USTRx Act text was published July 26. Arrington is asking the agency to investigate if the price controls are discriminatory, if the countries deny reciprocal market access to U.S. products, and if the price controls "are not market-based or do not appropriately recognize the value of innovative medicines" and "diminish incentives for innovation in a manner that delays, prevents, or otherwise adversely impacts the introduction of new medicines in the United States."

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told an audience at the U.S.-Africa Business Summit that she wants to meet with her African counterparts later this year "to discuss how we can build on the successes of the African Growth and Opportunity Act." The meeting will be virtual, she said. She said she wants to talk about anticorruption, good regulatory practices and labor and environmental standards with other top trade officials. "As we continue to develop our trade policy with respect to Africa, I also want to hear from businesses, civic organizations, labor leaders, and workers. There are far too many communities that have been left out from trade, labor, and development policy that was enacted without their input," she said in a speech July 27. She also offered technical assistance to countries implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area.

At the height of the Section 301 exclusions, 10% of imports covered by the China tariffs were excluded, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, though that fell from 10% to 7% across 2020, as exclusions expired and were not extended. Overall, about $71 billion of imports avoided the tariffs, GAO estimated.

The British International Trade Secretary is meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and what she called "leading Democrats," before heading to meet with California businesses and investors to round out the five-day trip. Secretary Liz Truss said she will speak with Tai on how the U.S. and the United Kingdom can cooperate more closely to "combat market-distorting trade practices such as industrial subsidies and dumping, as well as [pursue] working together to defend workers and companies that play by the rules against unfair practices in the global trading system, by combating forced labour and strengthening supply-chain resilience."

The U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement for how to remediate labor issues at a General Motors factory in Silao, Mexico, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a July 8 news release. The remediation plan is a result of the first use of “rapid response” provisions for addressing labor issues under USMCA (see 2105120007), the agency said in another release. “Reaching an agreement with Mexico on a remediation plan shows the USMCA’s potential to protect workers’ rights and the benefits of a worker-centered trade policy,” Tai said. “Fully implementing and enforcing the USMCA not only helps workers there, it also helps American workers by preventing trade from becoming a race to the bottom. Our agreements must be more than words on a page, and the United States will use every avenue to protect workers and ensure that Americans compete on a level playing field.”

Former U.S. trade officials are optimistic the Biden administration can revitalize a mini trade deal with India that was originally proposed under the Trump administration (see 2009010049). But they also said U.S. officials will likely look to add more provisions to any deal, including ones that address labor and climate issues.

Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade Chairman Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and ranking member Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, agree that the U.S. should be in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the expert witnesses at the hearing they held June 22 showed no path to the U.S. reentering the agreement with the 11 countries that went on to seal the deal. This was despite agreement among most subcommittee members (though not Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio) and the witnesses that leaving TPP was a tactical mistake that leaves the U.S. at a trade and geopolitical disadvantage.

The Biden administration emphasized how reaching an agreement to end a 17-year-dispute over government subsidies to both Airbus and Boeing does more than just lift tariffs for at least five years. They see the most significant plank of the agreement as the one in which European Union countries agree to prevent foreign investments in the aerospace sector that are done to acquire technology or know-how, and to counter investments by European aerospace companies in China or other countries that are done in response to incentives or because the investments are a condition to sell in that market.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told union members that steelworkers have faced unfair competition due to overcapacity, and that she'll be talking to her counterparts in Europe next week about how to create "new standards to combat the harmful industrial policies of China and other countries that undermine our ability to compete."

An amendment that will allow expanded information sharing from CBP on counterfeits, and which will renew the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, will be part of the China package expected to pass the week of June 8. The amendment, sponsored by Finance Committee ranking member Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, was modified slightly from its first introduction, when it failed to pass the filibuster threshold of 60 votes. This version, which passed with 91 votes on May 27, no longer expands a forced labor initiative on seafood to all seafood products.