Mara Lee

Businesses and interest groups have until April 18 to petition the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to modify the Generalized System of Preferences eligibility of any country; to request a waiver of competitive need limitations or continuation of a CNL over the threshold; to add or remove a product to GSP eligibility; to ask USTR to deny a de minimis waiver; and to ask USTR to redesignate an excluded product. The deadline was announced March 22, but it will be officially published in the Federal Register on March 25.

A dozen senators, led by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Doug Jones, D-Ala., and Angus King, I-Maine, have asked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to respond by early next month to follow-up questions they had after a staff briefing on the Section 232 auto report that has remained secret since it was given to President Donald Trump last month.

President Donald Trump said European officials have offered to drop their 10 percent tariffs on cars if the U.S. drops its 2.5 percent tariffs on cars and its 25 percent tariffs on light trucks. But he declined the offer. "I wouldn't do that deal," he said. "I would do it for certain products, not for cars." He said it's not a good deal because "a Chevrolet will never sell like a Mercedes does here."

The top economist in the White House added some nuance to President Donald Trump's comment that tariffs would stay after a deal with China. Larry Kudlow, speaking on Fox Business News March 21, said, "Tariffs are going to be part of this process. Some will come down, but it is doubtful, as the president said today, that we will remove all the tariffs at once."

As the Senate Finance Committee works to find middle ground between a proposal that would give Congress the opportunity to rescind the steel and aluminum tariffs and stop any future Section 232 tariffs, and one that would require veto-proof majorities to stop future 232 tariffs, conservative groups, farmers and metals manufacturing companies are weighing in on the future bill. In a letter, sent March 18 and led by Americans for Prosperity, the signers say that the change should give Congress the ability to stop future tariffs before they're implemented -- echoing the approach of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., in a bill he reintroduced in January this year (see 1901310029). The groups also say the committee should consider including a way for Congress to deal with the current Section 232 tariffs -- they described this as "transition rules" to provide lawmakers a path for "consideration of tariffs that have been unilaterally imposed prior to enactment of the legislation."

The latest batch of Section 301 exclusions (see 1903200067) only cover three 10-digit-level products in whole, while another 30 products are subsets of 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative requested consultations with South Korea because it says South Korea's approach to free trade investigations violates provisions of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). The FTA says that a party before the Korea Free Trade Commission or the International Trade Commission should be able to review and rebut the evidence against them. "Following extensive efforts to resolve this concern, USTR is requesting consultations at this time because recently drafted amendments to Korea’s 'Monopoly Regulations and Fair Trade Act' fail to address U.S. concerns that KFTC hearings continue to deny U.S. firms due process rights under the KORUS agreement that are necessary to secure a fair competition hearing in Korea," the office said March 15.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., defended the Commerce Department's decision to withdraw from the suspension agreement with Mexico on tomatoes, a move he had lobbied for. Arizona tomato producers have criticized the move, and also do not want the antidumping laws to change so that one region's growers can press a case (see 1903060008). "Washington’s willingness to sacrifice entire domestic industries and local production just to shave pennies off the costs that American consumers might pay for products is one of the main reasons why Donald Trump is president today," he said in a March 13 press release. Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Fla., said, "The data is overwhelmingly clear, Mexico has been waging an assault on southeastern tomato producers for years -- and getting away with it. I applaud the Administration for putting domestic growers first and stand by their decision to terminate the suspension agreement."

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is pushing for agriculture to be on the table in trade talks with the European Union, and members of Congress continue to applaud that approach. A bipartisan group of 114 House members sent a letter March 14 to the USTR arguing that the EU has high tariffs on ag imports, "unscientific sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and protectionist policies on geographical indications that hurt American exports not only to the EU but also to countries all over the world." The letter -- led by Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn. -- says that a deal without agriculture would significantly jeopardize congressional support. The EU Parliament, in a non-binding vote this week, could not pass a resolution that said the EU should enter trade talks that include industrial goods and exclude agriculture. In order to start talks, all 28 member states have to approve a negotiating mandate.

The message from both parties in Congress on the steel and aluminum tariffs has become more pointed over the last six weeks, according to a source who's involved in the push to get the new NAFTA passed. That message is: We won't ratify the new NAFTA until those quotas are gone. The source, who works for a large business organization, said the administration is realizing "you don't lift them in the morning and then vote later that day."