The Ocean Shipping Reform Implementation Act, a follow-up bill to OSRA from original co-sponsors Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., passed 58-1 out of the House Transportation Committee May 23.
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 limited trade deal announced between the U.S. and Taiwan (see 2305190074) angered the Chinese government. When asked about the deal at a regular press conference in Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that signing a deal with Taiwan "implies sovereignty." He added: "The U.S. move gravely violates the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués, and contravenes the U.S.’s own commitment of maintaining only unofficial relations with Taiwan. China deplores and strongly opposes this move."
The U.S., Japan, the EU, Canada and the U.K. said that stronger rules are needed to tackle market distortive policies, saying in a statement that with more of these, and "practices to reinforce vulnerabilities," the countries in the G-7 "need to make effective use of existing means while developing new tools as appropriate."
An International Trade Commission study of foreign-trade zones, and how U.S. policy supports or undermines their effectiveness, gave some support for the argument free trade zone advocates have made about using FTZs as a staging area for de minimis shipments, but suggested that complaints about treatment under USMCA were overblown.
Although experts gathered to talk about what legislative initiatives a House select committee on China might recommend, and they did that, they couldn't resist speculating about what the Biden administration will do to confront China's broken promises to liberalize and open up. The program, organized by the Washington International Trade Association, was held May 19.
The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific are trying to pass legislation to give the president the ability to respond to economic coercion of allies, but Chair Young Kim, R-Calif., asked witnesses at a subcommittee hearing she convened to advise what else could be done to stand up to China's economic aggression.
The U.S. and Taiwan completed five chapters of a trade agreement similar to the issues under discussion in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the U.S. announced late May 18.
Former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who got the most attention from members of a House select committee at a lengthy hearing on Chinese economic aggression, argued that the actions President Donald Trump took to discourage imports from China were not nearly enough, and that even removing China from most favored nation status would not be enough to protect American manufacturers from China's predation, because some of the Column 2 tariffs, such as those on cars, are not high enough. Ending China's MFN status "would be one of the greatest things you could possibly do for American manufacturing," he declared.
Senate Finance International Trade Subcommittee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., said he would like to hold a future hearing on the Americas Act, a proposal from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., to liberalize trade with Central American, Caribbean and South American countries (see 2301110045 and 2301130042), and to pay for grants and subsidized loans for countries reshoring or nearshoring out of China with changes to de minimis law. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Ahead of a Senate Finance Committee International Trade Subcommittee hearing on how to encourage more integration of the U.S. and the Central and South American economies, 38 House members, from both parties, wrote Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, asking that she not make it easier for apparel manufacturers to win exceptions to the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement's yarn-forward rules of origin.