A bill that would change a number of tax provisions, including tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act that govern where critical minerals, advanced batteries and electric vehicles can be sourced, passed the House Ways and Means Committee on a party-line vote.
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.
A recently introduced bill would end Chinese and Russian shippers' eligibility for de minimis, and would order the Treasury Department to determine, within 180 days, what rates the other countries deserve for de minimis, based on both their own de minimis treatment of U.S. shipments and their threshold to collect a value-added tax, if they have one.
The European Commission said the EU Council will still have to approve negotiating instructions for a critical minerals agreement with the U.S. before formal negotiations can begin, but the Commission adopted those directives June 14, it announced.
A bill that approves the Taiwan trade initiative, but says it cannot take effect until the administration submits an economic analysis of its effects and answers questions from Congress on implementation, passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a 42-0 vote.
The bipartisan sponsors of The Americas Act, an ambitious bill that would invite most Central and South American countries into USMCA and offer funds to companies moving production from China to the U.S. or an Americas Act country, as well as covering diplomatic and temporary work visas, said they are working to line up support in Congress, talking to the administration, and talking to Western Hemisphere countries that could benefit from the policy, in an effort to get the bill passed.
The U.S. is asking Mexico to review whether an Industrias del Interior (INISA) garment factory near Aguascalientes is coercing workers by favoring workers who support the company's collective bargaining agreement and disciplining -- and dismissing -- workers if they support the union Sindicato de Industrias del Interior. The administration made the announcement June 12. It is the first complaint not in the auto sector.
Countries in the Five Eyes Alliance, plus Japan, have issued a joint declaration on non-market practices and trade related economic coercion that they say "undermine the functioning of and confidence in the rules-based multilateral trading system by distorting trade, investment, and competition and harming relations between countries."
Although the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade does not change tariffs, and therefore the administration says no legislative approval is needed, the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees that deal with trade have introduced a bill that would give it congressional approval.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and three Republican senators reintroduced the China Trade Cheating Restitution Act to require CBP to pay interest on distributions of antidumping duties and countervailing duties to domestic producers under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, which applies to entries prior to Sept. 30, 2007.
Just after the administration asked the International Trade Commission to examine the emissions intensity of the steel and aluminum sectors, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate to tell the Energy Department to conduct a comprehensive study of the emissions from the production of aluminum, cement, iron and steel, plastic, and products made from all those materials, fertilizer, glass, lithium-ion batteries, paper and pulp, solar panels and cells, wind turbines, crude oil, refined oil products, natural gas, hydrogen, refined critical minerals and uranium.