Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he would join the resolution introduced last month by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, urging the resolution of trade negotiations with the United Kingdom (see 2103250040). “This is a very important trading relationship we've got to get settled right away,” Grassley said on a phone call with reporters April 13. Removing barriers for farmers must be a part of any U.K. free trade agreement, Grassley said. The only trade priority he would rank higher is ensuring China makes its promised purchases under phase one, he said.
The White House announced it has selected Chris Magnus, the police chief of Tucson, Arizona, and former police chief of Fargo, North Dakota, and Richmond, California, to lead CBP. The April 12 announcement said, “In each of these cities Magnus developed a reputation as a progressive police leader who focused on relationship-building between the police and community, implementing evidence-based best practices, promoting reform, and insisting on police accountability.” It also said that because Tucson is close to the Mexican border, he has extensive experience in addressing immigration issues.”
European Union Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, in a Der Spiegel interview published April 10, said that the EU has offered to lift its retaliatory tariffs in response to 25% tariffs on EU steel and 10% tariffs on EU aluminum, while they try to resolve the overcapacity problem. “We have proposed suspending all mutual tariffs for six months in order to reach a negotiated solution,” Dombrovskis said, according to the EU press office in Washington. “This would create a necessary breathing space for industries and workers on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.
The trade policy counsel at a free markets-oriented think tank said that the hike in tariffs on 70% of what we import from China has increased costs on consumers, led to an estimated 300,000 fewer jobs, and didn't achieve its aims. “That might have been worth it if China were making wholesale changes to its commercial policies, but the early indications are not positive,” Clark Packard said during an R Street Institute webinar April 9. Packard said that staffers on Capitol Hill accept his argument that tariffs are damaging to the U.S. economy, but they say that not doing anything to respond to China's quest for economic domination is not an answer.
A brief sketch of President Joe Biden's budget priorities, released April 9, proposes increasing Commerce Department funding by 28%, or $2.5 billion. In a bullet list of where extra funding would go, without line-item details, the administration said it would like to guarantee “Commerce has additional staff and resources to analyze export control and Entity List proposals, enforce related actions, and implement executive actions related to export controls and secure telecommunications.”
Four pro-trade House Democrats joined Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., recently in introducing a resolution asking the Biden administration to reopen negotiations in Geneva for an Environmental Goods Agreement at the World Trade Organization. DelBene led, joined by Reps. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif.; Don Beyer, D-Va.; Terri Sewell, D-Ala.; and Ron Kind, D-Wis.
The U.S.-Bangladesh Business Council aims to increase trade between the two countries, as Bangladesh is expected to graduate from the least-developed countries list by 2026. The U.S. is the largest importer of Bangladeshi products, and imported not quite $7 billion in 2019, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. A launch program hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that Bangladesh imported more than $1 billion in American agricultural products.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. is working with the world's 20 largest economies in the hopes of arriving at “a global minimum corporate tax rate that can stop the race to the bottom.” If that agreement included an approach to taxation of the digital giants such as Google and Facebook, that would also deflate the digital services tax controversy, which could otherwise lead to additional 25% tariffs on more than $800 million in goods (see 2103290049).
A bill called the Countering Chinese Propaganda Act, introduced by a half-dozen Republicans in the House and by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in the Senate, would require the executive branch to impose sanctions on anyone who “knowingly commits a significant act of malign disinformation on behalf of the government of a foreign country or foreign political party that has the direct purpose or effect of influencing political, diplomatic, or educational activities in the United States,” when that disinformation either harms U.S. national security or the safety of any citizen or green card holder. According to the bill, the Treasury Department already sanctioned the head of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, You Quan, for his role in the crackdown in Hong Kong. The United Front Work Department is the primary target of the bill, one of the co-introducers, Rep. Jim Banks, D-Ind., said.
Many advocates for developing countries say a TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver is needed to accelerate access to vaccines, treatments and COVID-19 tests, but most speakers at an American Bar Association-convened panel said that countries already have the power to curtail pharmaceutical patents for a pandemic, and that technical knowledge and input shortages are a bigger barrier than patents.