A high-profile legal effort to declare Section 232 tariffs unconstitutional has come to an unsuccessful end, after the Supreme Court on June 22 issued an order declining to hear the case. The high court’s denial of certiorari leaves the American Institute for International Steel, the trade group that filed the lawsuit, with no remaining options to continue its two-year fight against the tariffs, which it had argued were an unconstitutional delegation of congressional tariff powers to the president.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told two senators concerned about retaliatory tariffs in India that the U.S. is working on restoring India to the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, but that it's slow going. “We’re in the process of restoring it if we can get an adequate counterbalancing proposal from them,” he told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who had complained that American apples are now taxed at 70% in India because of Section 232 tariffs on metals from that country.
Rep. Xochitl Torres-Small, D-N.M., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, introduced a bill June 8 that would extend the limits on importing Russian uranium.
Any future Section 301 exclusion renewals will only last until the end of the year, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the House Ways and Means Committee as he testified June 17 about the administration's trade agenda, adding that “they will decide what happens after that.”
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 8-12 in case they were missed.
The Aluminum Association, which represents 120 companies, including the largest U.S. smelter, Alcoa, is pushing back against a call for Canada to again be subject to Section 232 tariffs on the metal The American Primary Aluminum Association's letter to the U.S. Trade Representative asked for the return of a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum. The group pointed to the closure of a Washington state Alcoa smelter as a reason to reimpose the tariffs.
The Commerce Department is allowing more time for comments on its new Section 232 investigation into transformer parts made from electrical steel, it said in a notice. Comments are now due July 3, and rebuttal comments are due July 24. The investigation (see 2005040059) follows years of complaints that companies could avoid 25% tariffs on electrical steel by buying assemblies of that kind of steel.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, a House Ways and Means Committee member who also leads on trade in the New Democrats, said she's worried that the participation of “so many countries” at the World Trade Organization in e-commerce talks -- including China -- will mean that the result will not be a high-standard agreement.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 1-7:
Aluminum waste recovered from a manufacturing process in a foreign-trade zone is not subject to Section 232 tariffs or to antidumping and countervailing duties upon entry, CBP said in a May 8 ruling. Shannon Fura, a lawyer with Page Fura, sought CBP's ruling on behalf of the U.S. Granules Corp. (USGC). The company buys aluminum scrap and waste from suppliers that generate recoverable aluminum from manufacturing operations within an FTZ, it said.