Mara Lee

A National Security Council representative pitched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as a "modern economic engagement," different from past free trade agreements, and one that will "reduce supply chain dependencies in a way that brings prosperity to all involved."

Even though there still are nearly two years left in the African Growth and Opportunity Act, companies that source from Africa and the countries who use AGOA tariff breaks are pushing Congress to renew the program long before the Sept. 30, 2025, deadline.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she discussed the next steps for negotiations on the global arrangement on steel and aluminum with her EU counterpart, Valdis Dombrovskis, and said she updated France's Foreign Trade Minister Olivier Becht on the negotiations. Her Oct. 28 readout of the meeting with Becht said she "noted the importance of both sides continuing to work together in a productive manner over the next several months. She reiterated the United States’ commitment to remain at the negotiating table in order to reach a meaningful outcome."

Trade ministers from Japan, the U.S., the EU, the U.K., France, Canada, Germany and Italy said they will work to reach an agreement on World Trade Organization reform "with the view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024." The binding appellate level of dispute settlement at the WTO has been defunct since late 2019, because the U.S. blocked all appointments to the appellate body.

A new Silverado Policy Accelerator report says not enough attention has been paid to China's production of mature or legacy semiconductors -- a category the paper calls "foundational" -- and the authors say ceding this market to China "would have significant national and economic security implications."

The Senate Finance Committee's top Republican, along with seven of his colleagues, accused Office of the U.S. Trade Representative officials of misleading congressional staff on what they would be negotiating on digital trade at the World Trade Organization. "As recently as this weekend, USTR officials told congressional staff that they had not abandoned support for negotiating the free data flow commitments at issue," Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and his colleagues wrote Oct. 26.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who traveled to China with the Senate majority leader and other senators in mid-October, said what he saw there reinforced his desire to pass what he calls a "foreign pollution fee," a tariff on imports that are more carbon intensive than domestic production. He told International Trade Today that he'll introduce the bill "we think later this month, or maybe early next month."

When the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization said the U.S. was no longer arguing that data localization is a violation of trade rules, and is no longer pushing for open data flows, blowback in the U.S. was immediate, and not just from industry interests who want the right to protect source codes and want the ability to transfer data across borders freely.

Mexico's Economy Secretariat announced last week that it resolved issues at Mas Air, a cargo airline in Mexico City, after it received a labor complaint from the U.S. government in late August (see 2308310029).

For all the talk of a climate club, where trade among countries inside the club is privileged, panelists at the Niskanen Center said the failure of the U.S. and the EU to reach an agreement on green steel in two years of talking shows how far off that possibility is.