BALTIMORE -- Trade policy under President Donald Trump is upending years of largely consistent approaches to U.S. trading partners, panelists said during the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference on June 8. While the panelists mostly agreed that the consequences of the tariff-centric approach is too harsh, some expressed sympathy with the administration's general reaction to globalization.
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
BALTIMORE -- CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told an audience of import and export professionals that CBP is going to use the White House directive on regulatory reform to edit regulations across many areas, including bonded warehouses, foreign-trade zones, vessel arrival, e-bonds and ending the requirement that customs brokers have local certification. McAleenan, who was speaking at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference June 8, also touched on agency initiatives in improving screening of small packages, protecting trademarks and copyrights, and blocking shipments of goods produced with forced labor. He encouraged everyone to make e-allegations on forced labor, and said he just received one from junior high school students in Maine who are concerned about slave labor in the chocolate industry.
BALTIMORE -- There are some barriers to data sharing among NAFTA companies that would ease goods' flow across borders, but progress is steady, panelists said at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. Kim Campbell, founder of MKMarin, a Canadian trade services firm, said some of the problems with data sharing on Canadian exports is that Canada generally doesn't ask exporters to submit information if they're sending their goods to their southern neighbor. "We don’t actually collect export data into the United States," she said, and shipments from Canada to Mexico are often not tracked, either, because firms took advantage of the lack of reporting requirement for shipments south, as goods transited across the U.S.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, characterized a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as a good dialogue, but according to some media reports, Democrats who attended the June 7 meeting said Lighthizer did not provide a clear explanation of where the U.S. is in NAFTA talks or in the China trade dispute. "My message remains the same: our trade practices need to hit the right target which is China … not our allies, and certainly not Americans," Brady said in a statement issued after the meeting. "But the Administration’s recent actions don’t achieve that goal."
President Donald Trump blasted allies' trade practices just before heading to the G-7 summit in Canada in a tweet storm that included repeated swipes at Canadian dairy practices, European tariffs and trade deficits. "Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers," he said in one tweet, before closing with, "Look forward to seeing them tomorrow."
BALTIMORE -- More than 15 years after CBP implemented the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) program, it's time to raise the standards for supply chain security, said Liz Schmelzinger, CTPAT director at CBP. "CTPAT is 17 years old now," she said, and "really not as effective as it used to be." Most pressing is the need for companies to examine cybersecurity aspects of the supply chain, she said, as the risk of data breaches and cyberattacks continues to grow.
BALTIMORE -- There has been a long wait for details on how drawback will work under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, but Dave Corn, vice president of Comstock and Theakston, said things are going to be moving in the next month. The Office of Management and Budget is required to send the proposed rule back to CBP by July 5, and Corn said he expects CBP to release a proposed rule notification a week or two after OMB acts. A lawsuit on whether CBP's action to change accelerated payment practices was outside its authority for interim guidance should also be resolved within a few weeks, he said while speaking at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference on June 8.
BALTIMORE -- The first round of Section 232 product exclusions should be released soon, said Rich Ashooh, assistant secretary for export administration at the Department of Commerce. "The [Commerce] secretary is very anxious to reach that milestone," he said in response to a question from International Trade Today. Ashooh spoke at the annual American Association of Exporters and Importers Conference June 7.
The Commerce Department has abandoned its seven-year ban on exports to Chinese telecom giant ZTE, instead levying a second $1 billion penalty for violating sanctions on North Korea and Iran, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in an interview on CNBC June 7. Previously, ZTE paid all but $300 million of a $1.19 billion fine, but Commerce said the company didn't follow through with its promises to discipline employees responsible for the illegal exports, and lied to the Bureau of Industry and Security.
House Speaker Paul Ryan expressed skepticism that there's a veto-proof majority aligned to pass a bill constricting the president's authority to levy tariffs. "You'd have to pass a law he would want to sign into law. You can do the math on that," he said at a press conference at the Capitol on June 6.