Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
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.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies expect the U.S. will get "a taste of its own medicine” when China appeals its loss over Section 232 retaliatory tariffs at the World Trade Organization, adding that China likely won't have to drop the tariffs since there is no appellate body to take that appeal.
A World Trade Organization dispute panel rejected China's claim that its retaliatory tariffs in response to Section 232 tariffs were justified because the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs were a safeguard in disguise.
Anabel Gonzalez, one of the World Trade Organization's deputy directors-general, said in a farewell column that although progress is being made on improving the WTO, "governments face some tough choices in the months and years to come to deal with pressing matters that, if left unchecked, could seriously erode the multilateral trading system and damage trade as an engine of growth and prosperity."
The number of antidumping or countervailing duty cases brought repeatedly by the same industry is growing, according to a new analysis by Craig Thomsen, an economist at the International Trade Commission.
The chairmen of the House Small Business Committee and the House Select Committee on China are asking for a detailed briefing by the end of June on DOJ's efforts to combat Chinese intellectual property theft.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and three Republican senators reintroduced the China Trade Cheating Restitution Act to require CBP to pay interest on distributions of antidumping duties and countervailing duties to domestic producers under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, which applies to entries prior to Sept. 30, 2007.
American Iron and Steel Institute CEO Kevin Dempsey thanked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for continuing to enforce 25% tariffs on imported steel from most countries, authorized under the Section 232 national security rationale.
Trade ministers from the U.S., Japan, the EU, Canada, the U.K., France, Germany and Italy said they will work for "necessary reform" at the World Trade Organization, including trying to reach an agreement to restore "a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all Members by 2024."
The victories that countries won at the World Trade Organization over American steel and aluminum tariffs (see 2212090060) will only complicate the discussion on how to bring back binding dispute settlement, panelists said at a Washington International Trade Association event.