Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., filed a motion to end debate on the nomination of Katherine Tai to be the next U.S. trade representative, which means a vote will come next week on the floor of the Senate. No date for the vote has been set yet.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments on the complaint that Hong Kong has raised at the World Trade Organization by April 12. The territory of Hong Kong has said that the U.S. is breaking WTO rules by requiring that exporters mark goods from Hong Kong as Made in China, rather than Made in Hong Kong. The U.S. issued an executive order last year making the change because of China's political crackdown against Hong Kong. The marking rule does not affect tariff treatment (see 2008130028).
The European Union and U.S. have moved closer to each other's positions on World Trade Organization reform, panelists on a webinar agreed, but that's not to say it's going to be quick or easy to get the appellate body restarted.
The acting U.S. trade representative, María Pagán, said that after two years of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, the European Union has agreed to adjust its tariff rate quotas since Great Britain and Northern Ireland are no longer in the EU. “Once implemented, this agreement will provide market access certainty for U.S. producers and exporters to the EU,” Pagán said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that now that the tariffs are suspended in the Airbus-Boeing dispute, he's interested in seeing “how do the negotiations go? I said last week that I didn’t object to taking the tariffs off if we can get a solution to this thing that’s been going on for … years.” Grassley, a Senate Finance Committee member who was speaking to reporters on a conference call March 8, said he doesn't think the Senate will vote on Katherine Tai's confirmation for U.S. trade representative this week. “But she’s surely going to be done before Easter break,” he said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative posted an official notice of the suspension of tariffs on British imports that were targeted as part of the Airbus-Boeing subsidies dispute. The press office did not respond to an inquiry March 8 about when the tariffs on European Union goods would be lifted, which is also part of the Airbus-Boeing dispute. The United Kingdom had already lifted its tariffs on U.S. exports to encourage negotiating a settlement; the EU will begin a similar suspension at some point, but did not give an effective date.
House Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., told an online audience that over the next four months, the U.S. government is going to set the stage for a trade program that supports environmental goals. Blumenauer, a longtime environmentalist, said he's not concerned that the European Union will dictate the terms of a carbon border adjustment mechanism, since its politicians have a head start. “We’ve had preliminary discussions, we’re going to have more,” he said during a webinar March 5 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on environment and trade.
The tariffs on British goods on the Airbus list will be lifted for four months to create space for settling the Airbus-Boeing dispute between the United Kingdom and U.S. The U.K. had already suspended its tariffs on American goods over Boeing subsidies on Jan. 1. That suspension will also last another four months. The tariffs on British imports were lifted immediately.
The administration needs to open up a fair, timely and transparent exclusions process for Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady said, but he doesn't know what the U.S. trade representative's timetable will be on deciding whether that will happen. He said he hopes it will be very soon. Brady, R-Texas, spoke to reporters on a conference call March 3. “One of the reasons I continue to push this administration to not simply follow through on compliance with the phase one agreement but to go further into phase two” is because once agreements are hammered out, he thinks, it will be time to begin to roll back those tariffs, he said.
The Senate Finance Committee unanimously voted March 3 to forward to the full Senate the nominations of Katherine Tai for U.S. trade representative and Wally Adeyemo for deputy treasury secretary.