Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said Republicans on the committee will be more active in 2020 in backing the administration's call for significant World Trade Organization reforms. When asked by International Trade Today if he thinks the appellate body will be revived this year, he said he didn't know. Brady, who was speaking to reporters Jan. 8, said, “There's got to be some serious changes. That's crucial to the credibility of the WTO for the long term. This has been a long-standing concern, not just in the U.S. Because of that appellate body/dispute resolution system is so long, at times arbitrary, and oftentimes not enforced, it really undermines the rules-based trading system -- which I know we all want.”
The panel deciding which French products should face Section 301 tariffs was intrigued by a point made by the Cheese Importers Association of America -- who could pay more on 21 Harmonized Tariff Schedule headings if all the proposed tariffs are included.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he's been told it's going to take three or four days for six other Senate committees to clear the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement so that it can go to the floor for a vote. Whether it can come up the week of Jan. 21 will depend on whether the articles of impeachment have arrived by then, he noted.
The Senate Finance Committee has recommended the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement come up for a vote in the Senate as a whole, voting 25-3 Jan. 7 to advance the deal. Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters that the USMCA implementing bill also has to get buy-in from the Budget, Environment and Commerce committees, though they don't have to hold mark-up hearings, as the Finance Committee did. He predicted that if the articles of impeachment aren't sent over to the Senate yet, “by next week, for sure,” there would be a floor vote, but if the articles arrive, he said, it could be the end of January before a vote.
For five months in 2018, it looked like Chinese injection molds were going to cost 25 percent more because of Section 301 tariffs, and the import volume from China in 2018 fell nearly 12 percent, to $385 million. Overall imports of injection molds -- which were valued at $1.8 billion in 2018 -- rose 5 percent that year.
Three dozen witnesses are scheduled to testify Jan. 7 on the appropriateness of levying tariffs on French handbags, makeup, champagne, enamel cookware, cheese, butter and yogurt in retaliation for a proposed digital services tax -- and some of the organizations that represent the companies that would be most affected by the tax are not asking for tariffs. In fact, only the National Milk Producers Federation, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Baker McKenzie say that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative should use tariffs to pressure France to abandon a DST.
President Donald Trump tweeted that he will sign “our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15” at the White House. "High level representatives of China will be present" and Trump is planning to go to Beijing "at a later date" to begin talks around Phase Two, he said. An administration official previously said the signing would be done between the U.S. trade representative and China's vice premier, and would happen in the first week of January (see 1912130035).
Japanese beef exporters will be able to send more beef to the U.S. at a lower tariff rate in 2020, as Japan's tariff-rate quota will be part of the total TRQ allocation, according to a White House proclamation released Dec. 27. However, Japan is a trivial source of imported beef in America; the top six exporters -- Canada, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua and Brazil -- account for 95 percent of imports.
Even though the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement has not finished its ratification path through Canada and the U.S. Senate, industry is already looking to how CBP will make the changes a reality, perhaps as early as May 2020. “This is going to move out of the Beltway political sphere and really get into the practical, everyday pain in the neck, painstaking trade world,” said Dan Ujczo, a partner at Dickinson Wright and a customs and trade lawyer who specializes in North American trade. A CBP official said last month that agency discussions for how to implement some USMCA provisions are underway (see 1911070015).
The U.S. delegation to the World Trade Organization rejected a proposal from countries on how to reform the appellate body (see 1912090031), saying that without understanding how the appellate body's overreach problem developed, there's no reason to believe that restating the constraints on the appellate body's authority will work. In December, when the appellate body ceased to exist because of U.S. refusal to allow new appointees, the National Foreign Trade Council hired Tailwinds Global Strategy's Bruce Hirsh to put forward ideas of how to resolve the impasse