Agriculture interests, including meat, wheat and grape growers, told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that they will lose market share to competitors in Australia, Europe, Canada, Mexico and Chile as those countries begin to benefit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and EU-Japan free trade agreement. As they testified Dec. 10 on negotiating a U.S.-Japan agreement, they said speed is of the essence.
US Trade Representative (USTR)
A U.S. Cabinet level position which serves as the President's primary representative, negotiator, and spokesperson regarding U.S. trade policy. The USTR heads the Office of the United States Trade Representative which develops and coordinates U.S. policy for international trade, commodities, and direct investments, as well as overseeing trade negotiations with other countries.
On Dec. 10, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will hear from companies, trade groups and unions on what they'd like it to push for in a U.S.-Japan trade agreement. The witness list was posted on USTR's site, and includes many more parties than testified at the U.S. International Trade Commission's Dec. 6 hearing on the potential economic effects of such a trade deal (see 1812060021).
China used to levy a 25 percent tariff on the BMWs, Mercedeses, Lincolns and Teslas its dealers imported from the U.S., but it recently dropped tariffs on other countries' cars by 10 percentage points, and hiked tariffs on American autos to 40 percent. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, in a late-afternoon announcement Nov. 28, said that's not fair. “China’s policies are especially egregious with respect to automobile tariffs," he said. "Currently, China imposes a tariff of 40 percent on U.S. automobiles. This is more than double the rate of 15 percent that China imposes on its other trading partners, and approximately one and a half times higher than the 27.5 percent tariff that the United States currently applies to Chinese-produced automobiles." He said that at the president's direction, "I will examine all available tools to equalize the tariffs applied to automobiles."
A former Office of the U.S. Trade Representative deputy predicted that the president of China and President Donald Trump would meet in the middle at the G-20 in Argentina, neither resolving the problems between the two countries nor declaring an impasse. He did not sound as confident that some kind of progress would be enough to halt the escalation in tariffs. "I think the signals from both countries are [that] they know this is an opportunity," Robert Holleyman said, as he opened a Nov. 28 Tariff Town Hall sponsored by tuna canneries. "I hope this gets us out of the current morass."
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a 53-page update to the Section 301 investigation that says there has been no fundamental change in China's "acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation, and indeed [it] appears to have taken further unreasonable actions in recent months." This Nov. 20 report, which comes 10 days before USTR Robert Lighthizer, President Donald Trump and other administration officials meet with China's president and negotiators, seems to counterbalance Trump's sunnier tone of late (see 1811190032).
Tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and the U.S. are "entirely inconsistent with the overall goals" of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a group of more than 35 trade groups told the U.S. trade representative in a letter sent Nov 19., and should be lifted so that the new NAFTA deal can be ratified. The letter, led by the National Foreign Trade Council, said that Congress may have a more difficult time ratifying the trade deal, given how many members have complained that tariffs are not needed on our neighbors. And, while the letter does not request a global lifting of the steel and aluminum tariffs, it says that the quotas and tariffs "have caused significant harm" to American manufacturers, and that the increased costs endanger jobs across many sectors, far more than those in the mills and smelters protected by the tariffs.
President Donald Trump issued Presidential Proclamation 9813 on Oct. 30, implementing the final results of the 2017-18 Generalized System of Preferences review and, in the process, making changes to tariff classification provisions for fruit juices. According to the recently issued results of the review, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is denying nearly all requests for waivers, removing nearly all country-product pairs that exceeded import limits from GSP eligibility.
The Philippines Secretary of Trade and Industry Ramon Lopez and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued a joint statement Oct. 22 describing "achievements resolving bilateral trade issues" between the two countries. The Philippines and U.S. have agreed to cooperate on automotive standards for imported autos; the Philippines has agreed to not discriminate against foreign electronics payments providers; and the U.S. will help the Philippines develop stronger cold chain practices, so it can export food that needs to be kept cold.
Democrats will be crucial to ratifying a new NAFTA if House Republicans lose the majority in November, whether the deal includes Canada or not. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said repeatedly that he expects significant numbers of Democrats to support the new NAFTA. Changes he won from Mexico should be good for domestic manufacturing, he believes, between bringing labor provisions into the body of the agreement and changing auto rules of origin to encourage manufacturing in the U.S. (and Canada, if it decides to join the deal).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it would like the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity to be able to restore a healthy market for global steel by reducing excess capacity, but after a meeting Sept. 20 in Argentina of officials from countries around the world, it is not confident it's going to work. The forum began nearly two years ago.