The Canadian Minister-Counselor for Trade said negotiators on the new NAFTA solved the roster problem in the old Chapter 20 of NAFTA, which was that any country could block the appointment of panelists in a dispute (see 1807230029). "That particular issue is a dramatic improvement from NAFTA 1 and NAFTA 2," Colin Bird said March 8 during an International Trade Update conference hosted by Georgetown's law school. President Donald Trump said on March 8 about the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that "we’ll be submitting [it] to Congress very shortly," and said the deal is "a great deal for the United States."
The Bureau of Industry and Security seeks comments by April 22 on its recently initiated Section 232 investigation into possible import restrictions on titanium sponge. Comments should address national security implications of imported titanium sponge, including the quantities imported, domestic capacity to meet national defense requirements, availability of resources and facilities to produce titanium sponge, and the impact of foreign competition on the U.S. titanium sponge industry. Rebuttal comments will be due May 22. The Section 232 investigation was begun at the request of a domestic titanium sponge producer, Titanium Metals Corporation (TIMET) (see 1903050030).
A lawyer representing the American Institute for International Steel recapped the arguments he made when announcing a June 2018 lawsuit over the constitutionality of Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act (see 1806270036), while a lawyer representing the American Iron and Steel Institute said that while the importers may disagree with the policy of worldwide tariffs, that doesn't make it unconstitutional.
A Trump administration official, the former U.S. trade representative during the George W. Bush administration and a prominent trade lawyer discussed the weaknesses of the World Trade Organization -- and globalization more generally -- during a session at the Georgetown Law International Trade Update March 7.
Canadian farmers have gained an advantage over U.S. competitors in exporting to Japan because of the U.S. decision to leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters on March 6. "It's really going to hurt, " he said. So moving quickly on a U.S.-Japan trade agreement is a necessity, he said, and he thinks there is a chance one could be concluded before the end of the year. "They're willing to sit down and negotiate ... along the lines of what they had agreed with the United States as part of TPP," he said. "If that's the context, except for maybe rice, that might be a fairly easy thing to negotiate."
The tone of both the U.S. and Indian governments on the termination of India from Generalized System of Preferences benefits leaves the door open for at least partial re-entry, said Dan Anthony, who manages the Coalition for GSP, in a March 5 interview. The letter President Donald Trump sent to Congress said, "I will continue to assess whether the Government of India is providing equitable and reasonable access to its markets." The Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry said, "India was agreeable to a very meaningful mutually acceptable package ... while keeping remaining issues under discussion in the future." The Commerce Ministry said India wanted to take a "suitable trade margin approach" to medical devices, and that it was open to "the requested simplified dairy certification procedure," to deal with the fact that American cows are fed animal-derived blood meal.
The Commerce Department will launch a Section 232 investigation that could result in tariffs, quotas or other import restrictions on titanium sponge, it said in a March 4 press release. Requested by Titanium Metals Corporation (TIMET) in a petition filed in September 2018, the investigation will examine “whether the quantity or circumstances of titanium sponge imports into the United States threaten to impair the national security,” Commerce said.
The new NAFTA will reverse outsourcing decisions in the auto industry, the U.S. Trade Representative's annual report on the trade agenda said, and one of the administration's top priorities for 2019 is to get Congress to ratify it. The report, which spends 26 pages on this year's agenda and the rest laying out the status of current free trade agreements, negotiations and enforcement actions during 2018, was released late March 1. Generally, the report defended the administration's actions, arguing they're not protectionist but rather pro-worker, and noting that both imports and exports grew in high single digits during the first 11 months of 2018.
Just over 4,500 Section 301 exclusion requests have been denied by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, according to an update published late Feb. 28. There have been 985 exclusion requests granted, covering 21 tariff lines. The largest number of the granted requests were for plastic injection molds, three types of radial bearings, linear-acting hydraulic motors and water coolers. This is much larger than the last update, published Dec. 21, 2018, when fewer than 25 had been granted (see 1812240010).
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told the House Agriculture Committee that a failure to ratify the NAFTA replacement "would be devastating," and he said he hopes all House members understand how damaging that would be to the agricultural economy. Perdue said there's a lot of energy and momentum among the groups lobbying for passage, but acknowledged that "the trickiness of the [Section] 232s" makes it more difficult to get the deal through. Because of the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, Mexico and Canada are levying tariffs on U.S. pork, cheese and other agricultural products.