Even as Europe comes to see China as a systemic rival, the entanglement of the German and Chinese economies continues unabated, and what "de-risking" should look like is hotly contested, witnesses told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at a hearing late last week.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said advocates for free trade agreements who argue that 95% of customers are outside our borders are myopic.
The chairmen of the House Small Business Committee and the House Select Committee on China are asking for a detailed briefing by the end of June on DOJ's efforts to combat Chinese intellectual property theft.
A bill that approves the Taiwan trade initiative, but says it cannot take effect until the administration submits an economic analysis of its effects and answers questions from Congress on implementation, passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a 42-0 vote.
Countries in the Five Eyes Alliance, plus Japan, have issued a joint declaration on non-market practices and trade related economic coercion that they say "undermine the functioning of and confidence in the rules-based multilateral trading system by distorting trade, investment, and competition and harming relations between countries."
Just after the administration asked the International Trade Commission to examine the emissions intensity of the steel and aluminum sectors, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate to tell the Energy Department to conduct a comprehensive study of the emissions from the production of aluminum, cement, iron and steel, plastic, and products made from all those materials, fertilizer, glass, lithium-ion batteries, paper and pulp, solar panels and cells, wind turbines, crude oil, refined oil products, natural gas, hydrogen, refined critical minerals and uranium.
Although the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade does not change tariffs, and therefore the administration says no legislative approval is needed, the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees that deal with trade have introduced a bill that would give it congressional approval.
Think tank scholars said the World Trade Organization isn't well suited to deal with technology sharing restrictions, but that the G-7 and coordinated bilateral actions have been effective so far.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai asked the International Trade Commission to produce a report on the greenhouse gas emissions in the domestic steel and aluminum sectors, "which will help to inform discussions with the European Union regarding the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum."
Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and 20 other members of the House of Representatives, mostly from the Midwest, asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to make the ethanol export market in Brazil a priority, because Brazil has both non-tariff barriers and tariffs on U.S. ethanol exports.