A bill that would allow Congress to reject safeguard tariffs and Section 301 tariffs, and that would require congressional approval before Section 232 tariffs could go into effect was introduced in the House of Representatives Sept. 26. The bill, called the Promoting Responsible and Free Trade Act, has co-sponsors Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., who was defeated in a primary earlier this year, ostensibly in retaliation for being insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.
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.
Florida's bipartisan Senate delegation -- Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bill Nelson -- introduced a bill that would allow trade remedy investigations to be raised for seasonal products. In a press release announcing the bill, S. 3510, Nelson said Florida growers of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, strawberries and blueberries "have been unable to fight back against Mexican trade abuses because U.S. law requires them to prove the abuse occurs year-round instead of just during the winter season when they make most of their sales." He said that NAFTA didn't make a change to antidumping laws, and so the two introduced the bill. “Enough is enough. Too many growers in Florida have been crippled by Mexican trade abuses,” Nelson said. “If the administration won’t fix this, Congress will.”
While an Atlantic Council scholar doesn't expect tariffs on Chinese goods to be lifted in the next six months, he said a resolution next year may be coming. "I don't believe there's any incentive for the administration to back down, certainly before the mid-terms," said Bart Oosterveld, the director of the Atlantic Council Global Business and Economics program. But, he added, he doesn't think the administration is interested in waging a trade war with China through the election in 2020. He also said the Chinese are willing to compromise.
President Donald Trump said Canada "doesn't seem to want to move" in NAFTA negotiations, and told reporters, "I must be honest with you, we're not getting along at all with their negotiators. We don't like their representative very much." Bad blood between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has long been a source of chatter in the trade world (see 1808020032), though some say it's not personal, it's because Canada is standing firm on its priorities.
A change in approach that goes beyond the tariffs that have inspired Chinese tariffs in return is coming, said Jeremie Waterman, president of the China Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We're now entering into the next phase on export controls; that will be a major issue for the business community, in terms of being able to bring your IP and create value in China." With regard to rolling back the tariffs, he said there's no process for negotiations now, and CEOs are starting to try to figure out if this is going to last long enough that they need to make changes to where they manufacture, including leaving the U.S. because of Chinese retaliatory tariffs. "The supply chain conversations at the C suite level are very hot and heavy right now," he said.
When Mexico was confronted with an administration that doesn't agree that free trade is good for America, it had "no option but to play ball," given the interdependence of the Mexican and U.S. economies, said Karen Antebi, economic counselor for the Trade and NAFTA Office at the Mexican Embassy. Antebi, one of the speakers at the Global Business Dialogue event Sept. 26, said Mexico wanted to reassure foreign investors, preserve economic access to the U.S. market and maintain North American competitiveness in a new NAFTA. "Clearly U.S. demands drove the negotiations," she said. "What can I say? This was a pragmatic, not a principle-driven negotiation."
Both Democrats and Republicans said auto tariffs aren't going to help add U.S. manufacturing, and numerous members of the Senate Finance Committee questioned the logic of the Trump administration's national security rationale for threatening them. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, noted that he has a bill that would not allow the president to act unilaterally to raise tariffs on autos or auto parts under Section 232, and that Honda North America has endorsed it. But little of the two-hour hearing focused on how Congress could take back power on trade to constrain the administration. Even committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who criticizes the president's trade policy as chaotic and ineffective, hedged that "perhaps" it is "time for the Congress to think about reclaiming that authority," in his opening statement.
A Canadian customs broker told a group of her colleagues from the U.S. that the last year "has been probably the most challenging year of my life." Kim Campbell, who is president of MKMarin Trade Services, fears it could get worse. If the Trump administration decides to levy tariffs on Canadian cars, car parts or uranium under Section 232, the amount of goods that now cross the border tariff-free would drop dramatically, she believes, because Canada would have to put in place counter-tariffs.
The World Trade Organization is ill-equipped to handle the conduct of non-market economies, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Sept. 25, but that doesn't mean it's useless. "I personally believe it’s an important body," said Lighthizer, who was once nominated to serve on the WTO appellate body but ultimately wasn't chosen. "If we didn’t have it, we’d have to invent it." Lighthizer was speaking at the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit in New York.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer defended the increasing pressure on China with tariffs while speaking at the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit in New York on Sept. 25. Asked about the approach and its effect on consumer prices, Lighthizer said that "first you have to start with the proposition that we have a problem." He suggested that a lot of people in the business community don't believe that China's theft of intellectual property and a $342 billion trade deficit with China are a big deal. "They inform that judgment because they’re making money in the short term in that environment, so they’re defensive of that. If you start off with the proposition that this is a major, major threat to the future of the U.S. economy, then you have to do something."