A proposal by the U.S. to the EU on how to structure trade preferences for clean, fairly traded steel and aluminum says that members of a global climate club would agree that when they exported steel or aluminum to other member countries, if their plants were at or below the importer's plant emission standards, they would enter with no tariffs, but if their plants were above the standards, they would have to pay a carbon tax.
More than half of the House Ways and Means Committee members, including all three of the Republicans vying to be its chairman in the next Congress, are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to initiate formal dispute resolution consultations with Mexico over Mexico's barriers to U.S. crops that are genetically modified or use other biotechnology.
Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., speaking at an event hosted by Punchbowl News, asserted he will be the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, not Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla.
The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee said Republican and Democratic staff on the committee "haven’t had extensive discussions on GSP and MTB, and won't, my sense is, as long as there’s an insistence on [linking them to renewing] Trade Adjustment Assistance."
Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Chris Coons, D-Del, laid out parameters of a trade package they hope to get passed in the next three weeks in Congress.
A readout of a Dec. 1 meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Mexican Economy Secretary Raquel Buenrostro, a new appointee, said Tai "reiterated the importance" of Mexico imposing a ban on the import of goods made with forced labor. Tai also said it's urgent consultations over what the U.S. sees as discriminatory investment policies in Mexico's energy sector make "meaningful progress."
After a vote to add sick leave days to the railroad workers' contract garnered a majority, but didn't reach the 60-vote threshold needed in the Senate, the Senate voted 81-15 to impose the previously negotiated contract on the 12 railroad unions. Four of those unions, including the largest one, had been threatening a strike on Dec. 9, which would have disrupted 40% of cargo transport. The other unions would have honored the picket lines.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a conference that Canada had to talk the U.S. out of structuring its Inflation Reduction Act electric vehicle incentives so that they were tied solely to U.S. production.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would impose the contract that eight rail unions approved but four rejected, a contract that protects health insurance benefits and increases pay 24% across four years, with more than half of those pay increases applied retroactively, since the last contract expired in mid-2020.
Nearly 60 agricultural trade groups, companies and ag services providing trade groups asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to schedule confirmation votes for the chief agricultural negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and for the undersecretary of agriculture for trade and foreign agricultural affairs at USDA.