The Inflation Reduction Act creates opportunities for more North American economic integration, according to a Mexican diplomat and a top General Motors official.
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.
The Institute for Policy Studies, a nonprofit critic of globalization, war, and human rights abuses around the globe, hosted an event that questioned the ability of trade to help advance the green transition needed to prevent uncontrolled global warming.
Representatives from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department presented draft negotiating text on trade facilitation, agriculture, services, domestic regulation, and transparency and good regulatory practices in the trade pillar, as well as text on supply chains, during negotiations for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in Brisbane, Australia, Dec. 10-15.
The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and the presumed front-runner for chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, along with 30 other Republicans on the committees, told Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that her strategy to tax multinationals -- and in the process, convince countries to abandon digital services taxes -- will not be accepted in Congress.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending tariff exclusions for 352 products from China that had been scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Those exclusions will now last until Sept. 30 next year.
Ambassador Maria Pagan, who leads the U.S. delegation at the World Trade Organization, defended the U.S. during the two-day session in Geneva that began Dec. 14. All countries in the WTO must answer questions about their policies every few years.
House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady, R-Texas, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, and outgoing New Democrats Chair Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., introduced a resolution that asks the U.S. trade representative to re-launch negotiations at the World Trade Organization to liberalize trade in environmental goods.
Although the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing was ostensibly about using trade agreements to promote environmental causes, Republicans on the dais mostly focused on their frustration that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill have not been renewed, even though they have been lapsed for nearly two years.
Although some observers thought the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's reaction to losing cases filed by Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and China at the World Trade Organization over its steel and aluminum tariffs marked a new era of rejecting the rules-based trading system, others who had served either in the WTO or the U.S. government said there was nothing too surprising about the U.S. reaction to its loss.
U.S. exporters will not face barriers in exporting to the EU in the near-term, but as more products are added to the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism, it could become a disadvantage under the EU's plans for a carbon border adjustment tariff.