Talks toward a comprehensive trade agreement with the United Kingdom would likely continue under a Joe Biden administration, though when a deal could be reached is unclear, K&L Gates partner Stacy Ettinger said during a webinar on how trade policy would change if there is an administration change after the election, or progress if there is a second Trump administration. Ettinger, a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., before joining the private sector, was joined by former White House trade staffer Clete Willems, now at Akin Gump, during a webinar Oct. 20 hosted by American University's law school.
Section 232 Tariffs
The United States currently maintains a 25% tariff on steel imports and 10% on tariff on aluminum imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. In 2018, the Trump administration imposed Section 232 Tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the United States, citing national security concerns. The U.S. agreed to lift tariffs on Canada and Mexico after the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and reached deals with the European Union, Japan and other countries to replace the tariffs with quotas for steel and aluminum imports into the U.S.
The Commerce Department had little success when it tried to reduce the number of Section 232 exclusion applications that were rejected for technical problems by launching an applications portal in 2019, a Government Accountability Office report, released Sept. 15, said. The GAO said that the rejection rate went from 18% to 16% with the new portal. Even though the portal has mandatory fields, in an effort to eliminate incomplete submissions, the rejections for reasons other than an incorrect Harmonized Tariff Schedule code went from 27% in Regulations.gov to 43% in the portal.
The Trump administration's use of tariffs on steel and aluminum, China tensions and the threat of tariffs on French products in retaliation for digital taxes have prompted constituents to lobby on trade like never before, said Nasim Fussell, a Holland & Knight partner who recently left her position as chief international trade counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. That constituent interest elevated trade for some senators who had not been hearing from constituents in the past.
As Canadians consider which of 68 aluminum-containing products to put on a tariff retaliation list, U.S. industrial producers and buyers of aluminum reacted with dismay to the news that a large segment of Canadian aluminum imports will face a 10% tariff starting Aug. 16.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told the United Steelworkers trade union that a core part of his trade strategy “will be to enlist our international allies to collectively tackle unfair practices by China in order to ensure American steelworkers have good, plentiful union jobs. Trump has humiliated and infuriated our allies.”
The president must strictly adhere to statutory timelines when setting Section 232 tariffs, and can’t subsequently modify or adjust those tariffs beyond those legal deadlines without conducting another formal investigation, the Court of International Trade said in a July 14 decision. The court found that President Donald Trump acted outside of these deadlines when he raised tariffs on Turkish steel from 25% to 50% in August 2018 (see 1808100003), granting two importers refunds of duties collected as a result of the tariff increase.
2020 outpaced even the active 2019 in terms of the frequency of Harmonized Tariff Schedule updates. Most of the updates implemented new Section 301 exclusions and changes and extensions for existing ones. Other major changes included new Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum "derivatives" and the withdrawal of Generalized System of Preferences benefits for many goods from Thailand In all, 13 revisions were issued prior to the mid-year Revision 14, as follows:
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.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 1-7:
After years of complaints about the exclusion process for steel and aluminum tariffs, the Commerce Department is soliciting comments about how to improve it. Comments should include input on what should be on the request, objection and rebuttal forms; who should be allowed to request or object; the information published with the decisions and the factors for making a decision; how granular the product descriptions have to be; and whether there should be exclusions for downstream products.