Grassley Says No Major Change to de Minimis in Store With USMCA
The idea that the U.S. might lower de minimis for Canadian and Mexican shipments, because those countries did not raise their thresholds as much as the U.S. wanted, is not going to be part of the NAFTA rewrite, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Oct. 29.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The reciprocity proposal had been panned by members from both parties (see 1907300048), but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was still leaving the door open to the change. Grassley, in response to a question from International Trade Today during a conference call, said: "There’s a lot of members of Congress don’t want that changed. If it was going to be changed dramatically, I would know about it."
Grassley said that even though legislative time is limited in 2019, as long as a Senate impeachment trial isn't underway when the House of Representatives ratifies the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, it can still get done this year. "What you might not know, there’s just a terrible lot of agreement [between the USTR and House Democrat working group] that can be put into legislative language right now, and it’s being written right now," he said, referring to the time needed for the administration to prepare a draft implementing bill.
Once that implementing bill is introduced, the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee would do mock markups of that bill. "These mock markups can be done very quickly," he said -- and the Senate markup can happen before House ratification. And, because Senate cloture rules, which require 60 votes to proceed to debate, do not apply under fast track, Grassley said: "It can be brought up immediately, the next day, after the House gets done with it."
Grassley also addressed prospects for a markup of Section 232 reform, to give Congress more of a say over national security tariffs, such as those on steel and aluminum, and those proposed for auto parts and autos. The chairman's deadline for introducing a bill has slipped repeatedly through the year (see 1908070058 and 1906130033). The problem is that two Republicans on the committee -- Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania -- have different approaches on how much power Congress would have to stop tariffs. Grassley's staff tried to find a way to split the difference, but both sides have not agreed to it. Grassley said that if he's able to broker a compromise on Section 232 reform, there would be a markup during November, "but so far I don’t have that compromise that I know can get a majority of votes to get out of committee."