Many importers who were hit with Section 301 tariffs six years ago expected they would be rolled back in 18 months or two or three years, said Nicole Bivens Collinson, director of Sandler Travis's international trade and government relations practice. Then, once that didn't happen, they thought they'd see what happened in the Biden administration.
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.
Full details about the Section 301 exclusion process will be revealed next week, but a White House memo said that importers of machinery in chapters 84 and 85 will need to submit requests for exclusions, even though the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative already has compiled a list of HTS codes it sees as appropriate targets for exclusions. The memo said there will be a way to register opposition to those requests, as well. The memo said the USTR "shall prioritize, in particular, exclusions for certain solar manufacturing equipment."
Section 301 China tariff changes outlined by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative May 14 will take effect approximately 90 days after a request for comments that will be issued next week. That includes a 100% tariff on Chinese-origin electric vehicles, as well as the jump to 25% Section 301 tariffs on steel and aluminum products, ship to shore cranes, lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries, battery parts for non-lithium-ion batteries, "some critical minerals" and face masks, and a bump to 50% tariffs on solar cells, syringes and needles, the White House said in a fact sheet.
In the first third of its first public hearing on promoting supply chain resilience, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and interagency officials heard from groups disputing the premise of the project -- that liberalizing trade was harmful to U.S. workers and manufacturing -- and from those who say the worker-centered trade approach of the Biden administration is not going far enough to restore American manufacturing.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America's president told the U.S. trade representative that customs brokers and others in the trade community aren't "pro forced-labor, pro-pollution, pro-unsustainable environmental practices," but that too often, "‘race to the top’ objectives do not take into consideration the ability to actually implement the policies, and the costs associated with the goals."
More than a quarter of the U.S. Senate asked the U.S. trade representative to push back against the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation, saying the approach presents "significant compliance issues due to its stringency and ambiguity. One specific concern is the traceability requirement. The EUDR imposes a geolocation traceability requirement that mandates sourcing to the individual plot of land for every shipment of timber product to the EU. In the U.S., 42 percent of the wood fiber used by pulp and paper mills comes from wood chips, forest residuals, and sawmill manufacturing residues -- wood sources that cannot be traced back to an individual forest plot."
The U.S. ambassador to Canada and the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. said trade cooperation between the two countries -- each is the other's top trading partner -- is crucial, but their tone on the NAFTA replacement was slightly different.
Panelists from the U.S. and Mexico said that cars assembled in Mexico by Chinese-owned firms can't enter the U.S. with USMCA benefits because of the stringent rules of origin, but spent less time talking about how cars manufactured outside China, including in the U.S., could enter under 2.5% most favored nation tariffs.
Ten senators have introduced a bill to require that the administration reinstate 25% tariffs on Mexican steel imports for at least one year, because they say that Mexico is not honoring the 2019 agreement that lifted Section 232 tariffs on Mexico and Canada. A companion bill was also introduced in the House.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she will be bringing up China's overproduction of electric vehicles as part of the 2026 USMCA review process, implying that she expects Mexico to reject Chinese investment in its auto manufacturing sector.