Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Trade Minister Hagiuda Koichi Nov. 15, and talked about strengthening supply chains, export controls and cooperating on digital technologies -- and talked about how to cooperate to confront excess capacity in steel and aluminum. Japanese exports of steel face a 25% tariff in the U.S., and after the U.S. agreed to tariff rate quotas on steel with Europe, Japan asked to get a similar deal.
A new dwelling fee on containers at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports should not be passed on to importers, said Noel Hacegaba, chief operating officer of the Port of Long Beach. Hacegaba was speaking to the U.S. Fashion Industry Association virtual conference, during a Nov. 10 panel on the supply chain.
The former minister counselor for trade affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing told an audience that in the last few years, Chinese government officials "feel like they've outflanked us on the trade front." James Green, who was speaking on a Flexport webinar on the future of U.S.-China trade policy, said that officials were pleasantly surprised that the tariffs on most exports to the U.S. did not hurt their economy more. And, he said, between sealing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and applying to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they also feel like they have other options for exporting when things with the U.S. sour.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the generally pro-trade New Democrat Coalition, told a webinar audience that reaching an international agreement to lower tariffs on environmental goods and services would be good for U.S. companies, since the U.S. has lower tariffs on these goods than the European Union and China. She said that the European Union and China both export more environmental goods than the U.S. does.
The bipartisan infrastructure package that passed the House Nov. 6 will dedicate $17.4 billion to ports, Coast Guard facilities, inland waterways, and land ports of entry, and flood and environmental projects from the Army Corps of Engineers, with much of the funds expected to be spent over a three- to five-year horizon.
Ahead of a planned trip to India Nov. 22 by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, the Alliance for Trade Enforcement is asking her to make sure that the U.S.-India Trade Policy Forum "eliminates significant trade barriers in India to expand economic opportunities for U.S. workers and businesses."
Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.
President Joe Biden said that the agreement to lift 25% tariffs on European steel and 10% tariffs on European aluminum and replace them with tariff rate quotas "immediately removes tariffs" in the European Union on a range of American products. However, the removal is not so immediate. The member states will have to vote on removing the tariffs before they are lifted, according to an EU spokesperson.
A European Union official said that even once the bloc passes its Carbon Border Adjustment Measure, "that definitely doesn’t preclude joint work on international coordination" on preventing manufacturing from moving to countries that aren't as ambitious in fighting climate change.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that she should talk to Chinese officials about that country's decision to buy medical devices based on the lowest price. The two sent a letter Oct. 26 that said before the volume-based procurement rules came into effect, the U.S. exported $6 billion annually in medical devices to China and imported not much more from China in that category. "The medical device industry employs over 400,000 Americans and pays on average 28% higher wages than other manufacturing jobs. Given the importance of this industry to our country’s economy, we must pursue policies that hold China accountable for deliberate actions that harm our job creators and employees. China keeping the current structure of the VBP in place will have ripple effects in communities supported heavily by the medical device industry and could jeopardize access to life-saving products made through cutting-edge technologies," they said.