New Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced his trade policy staff, keeping several who served under the previous chairman.
The U.S. is confronting Peru over changes to its logging oversight, a move described by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as an unprecedented step that makes it clear that the Trump administration "takes monitoring and enforcement of U.S. trade agreements seriously...."
Ambassadors from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, along with officials from the Agriculture, Energy, Commerce and Treasury departments, will conduct trade negotiations in China starting Jan. 7.
Even though only 21 percent of the nearly 10,800 Section 301 exclusion requests have been adjudicated, Miller & Chevalier is drawing some qualified conclusions about what worked. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative approved exclusions to the 25 percent tariff on 984 products from the initial $34 billion in Chinese imports targeted (see 1812240010). The two most important factors, the law firm said in an analysis published Jan. 2, are specificity around why the import could not be sourced outside China and concrete explanations on how the additional duties would hurt the requester.
The trade conflict between the U.S. and China could benefit Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand if purchasers shift to those countries should the conflict drag on or get worse, according to a recent paper by economists working at the Asian Development Bank.
China will decrease tariffs on 706 items on Jan. 1, 2019, including on raw materials for production, such as raw aluminum. It is also cutting tariffs sharply on many more advanced items. For instance, the tariff on laser welding machines will drop from 10 percent to 5 percent; camera tariffs will fall from 9 percent to 4 percent; movie camera and projector tariffs will fall from 8 percent to 3 percent; tariffs on printing machines and copiers will be reduced from 10 percent to 3 percent; tariffs on heavy trucks with cranes will drop from 15 percent to 8 percent; and tariffs on cement trucks and wreckers will slide from 15 percent to 10 percent.
President Donald Trump threatened again to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border. Last time, it was because he was angered that Central Americans were crossing through Mexico to come to the U.S. This time, it is because Democrats in the Senate are not interested in offering the $5 billion in wall construction funding he is seeking for the current fiscal year. "We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with," he tweeted Dec. 28, continuing, "The United States [loses] soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year (not including Drug Money which would be many times that amount), that I would consider closing the Southern Border a 'profit making operation.' We build a Wall or..... .....Close the Southern Border. Bring our car industry back into the United States where it belongs. Go back to pre-NAFTA, before so many of our companies and jobs were so foolishly sent to Mexico."
The partial federal government shutdown that has shuttered the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission, and is forcing most CBP workers to show up for duty but not get paid, is unlikely to end before Jan. 3. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., head of the House Freedom Caucus, told CNN that Democrats have dug in and that President Donald Trump's compromises are falling on deaf ears.
Rusal, which was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April, will be delisted from sanctions Jan. 18, 2019, Treasury told Congress earlier this month. Although Rusal, a major aluminum producer based in Russia, was sanctioned in April, it received a series of stays of execution over the months as the government negotiated on how the company could avoid being put out of business as a result of the sanctions.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative copied most of the NAFTA priorities' language on customs and trade facilitation for its U.S.-Japan negotiating priorities, with one major exception. The USTR raised the idea of matching de minimis value thresholds as part of a trade deal. Specifically, it wrote that an agreement should "provide for simplified customs procedures for low-value goods and a more reciprocal de minimis shipment value."