Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the new Senate Finance Committee chairman, said that while there's room for Democrats to get some of their priorities in the new NAFTA, he thinks President Donald Trump should play hardball if Democrats insist on reopening negotiations. "I want to sit down and talk to those Democrats and see what they have in mind, because surely they can't have in mind renegotiating. But there's things we can do, like side letters on what our feeling is about it," he said. "If they're reaching the point where you gotta go back to the negotiating table, I would encourage the president to pull out of NAFTA, and hope that they're smart enough not to let that happen."
Trade talks have not yet begun between the European Union and the U.S., but EU Trade Minister Cecilia Malmstrom told reporters Jan. 9 after a bilateral meeting in Washington with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer that the two "took stock" of where the working group is.
Mid-level talks in China that are attempting to resolve the trade conflict with the U.S. continued past the original two-day schedule, according to reports from media outlets with reporters in China. President Donald Trump, just after 8 a.m. on Jan. 8, tweeted, "Talks with China are going very well!" The editor in chief of a Chinese newspaper tweeted that he thinks the fact that they continued for a third day "sends a signal: The two sides are in serious talks and working hard to solve the disagreements between them."
Three Florida legislators, from both the House and Senate, have reintroduced a bill that aims to change the rules of antidumping cases to benefit Florida fruit and vegetable growers who have lost market share to Mexican farms. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., said the bill "levels the playing field for Florida fruit and vegetable growers by allowing them to more easily combat Mexico’s unfair and illegal trade practices." Rep. Al Dawson, D-Fla., also sponsored the bill.
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.