The number of investigations under the Enforce and Protect Act almost doubled in fiscal year 2018, CBP said in its annual report, and the agency was able to issue final determinations for 12 investigations that year; in fiscal year 2017, it finished only one. To conduct EAPA investigations, CBP has traveled to Thailand, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Cambodia and the Philippines. During the year, it took interim measures in six ongoing EAPA investigations to collect antidumping and countervailing duties. The entire EAPA program prevented the evasion of $50 million in AD/CVD duties during the year, the agency said.
Rep. Joe Cunningham, a Democrat who beat a Republican incumbent in South Carolina, recently introduced a bill that would give Congress the ability to block Section 201 or 301 tariffs if they could muster veto-proof majorities. It would also require that Section 232 tariffs be approved by Congress within 60 days of a Commerce Department recommendation if they are to go into effect. The bill, which does not have any co-sponsors, includes a two-year retroactivity period for Section 232 tariffs, which would give Congress the ability to rescind steel and aluminum tariffs. “No President, Democratic or Republican, should be able to unilaterally impose tariffs without Congressional approval. No one wins in a trade war, and this legislation will allow Congress to play a more proactive role in trade policy,” Cunningham said in a press release announcing the bill earlier this month.
Over the year since the European Union and the U.S. agreed to pursue trade talks, the two sides "have actually made some decent progress" on regulatory cooperation in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, but "where we are stuck is on industrial tariffs," said Sabine Weyand, director general for trade at the European Commission.
American farmers are losing market share in Japan as Canada and Australia get the benefit of lower tariffs through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and European producers also get benefits through their region's free trade agreement with Japan.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who's also running for president, has asked an ethics official in the Commerce Department to examine whether the head of the International Trade Administration and the acting undersecretary for Industry and Security have ethical conflicts in the steel and aluminum Section 232 exclusion process. Both ITA and the Bureau of Industry and Security are responsible for evaluating the exclusion requests, and BIS officials ultimately grant or reject the requests.
President Donald Trump rejected implementing quotas or tariffs on imported uranium used for nuclear power plants -- a decision sure to please Canada, as it is the most significant source of U.S. imported uranium.
Freshman Democrat Stephanie Murphy of Florida is already making a name for herself on trade, both during House Ways and Means Committee hearings and through leading an effort to restrict the administration's ability to levy tariffs on national security grounds without congressional approval.
The Section 232 uranium investigation is complete, and the president should make his decision by July 13, a Bureau of Industry and Security official told attendees at the annual BIS export controls conference. It was completed April 14, he said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for July1-5 in case they were missed.
2019 is shaping up to be another active year in terms of changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Like last year, a series of revisions were necessary in the first half of the year to implement Section 301 exemptions and an increase for $200 billion worth of the China tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent. Other major changes are related to the Generalized System of Preferences, and in particular the removal of India and Turkey from the program. In all, seven revisions were issued prior to the mid-year Revision 8, as follows: