Importers may want to delay filing for U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement reconciliation because the USMCA currently doesn't allow for post-entry refunds of merchandise processing fees, CBP officials said during a National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones webinar on June 16. Maya Kamar, CBP director for textiles and trade agreements, said that although the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is working with Congress for a legislative fix to the issue, CBP doesn't yet have clarity on whether such a bill will pass (see 2006050034).
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, rejected a compromise position that the United Kingdom reportedly is considering -- ending its ban on U.S. hormone-treated beef and chlorinated chicken, but taxing those imports, and letting food that meets U.K. standards in without a duty. He said the British negotiators believe that this bifurcated approach will encourage U.S. producers to “change our farming practices. But it’s another way of being very protectionist,” he told reporters on a June 16 call. “Agriculture's going to be tough,” he said.
While most of the focus on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement has been on the changes to the auto rules of origin and enforcement measures aimed at Mexico, Crowell & Moring lawyers explained that importers and exporters of textiles and chemicals also can take advantage of rules that changed from NAFTA for inclusion in the updated agreement.
The negotiations toward a U.S.-United Kingdom trade agreement, which are happening online, are starting with the commonalities, but Britain's North American trade commissioner and consul general in New York said he thinks they will be able to find a way forward even on the sensitive issues in agriculture.
The United Kingdom and Japan officially opened trade negotiations June 9, the U.K. said in a notice. The U.K. said a free trade agreement with Japan would be an “important milestone towards the UK’s accession” to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both countries “believe that the right response to the unprecedented economic challenge posed by coronavirus [COVID-19] is to make international trade easier and fairer,” U.K. Secretary of State-International Trade Liz Truss said in a statement.
The U.S. may add new tariffs on cars from the European Union unless the EU ends tariffs on U.S. lobsters, President Donald Trump said while speaking in Maine June 5. “European Union charges us a tariff; they don’t charge Canada a tariff,” Trump said. “This is for the press: So Canada doesn’t pay a tariff for the same exact lobster in the same waters, but we pay a tariff. If European Union doesn’t drop that tariff immediately, we’re going to put a tariff on their cars, which will be equivalent -- coming in -- come in for nothing, which is ridiculous.” Trump said White House adviser Peter Navarro would be in “charge of that one.” Navarro will “be the lobster king now,” Trump joked.
Brazil's top diplomat in Washington said talks with U.S. officials are advancing, and Nestor Forster said they've made “concrete progress toward achieving the vision that our presidents set at Mar-a-Lago in having a meaningful trade and economic package by the end of this year.” The package will not include any changes to quotas or tariffs, as Brazil is part of Mercosur, a customs union in South America. Forster, the chargé d'affaires at Brazil’s embassy in Washington, was speaking at an Atlantic Council online event June 4.
Mexico's Economy Minister Luz de la Mora said that the uniform regulations that pertain to issues outside the auto industry will be ready by July 1 -- but strongly suggested that the uniform regulations will not be ready by the date of entry into force of the U.S.‐Mexico‐Canada Agreement. “There has been great progress on non-auto URs, and they will be ready by July 1, as for the auto rules of origin, we expect to advance substantially in coming weeks,” she said during a Cato Institute interview May 27. She said that Mexico wants “to make sure the transition to the new regime is effective, efficient.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said its negotiators will seek to make things easier for express shippers in Kenya, will seek to get Kenya to agree to basing its phytosanitary rules on science, and “secure comprehensive duty-free market access for U.S. industrial goods” as it works towards a free-trade agreement with that country.
Outsourcing wasn't about competitive advantage, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said during an interview with conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, in a video branded Conservative Political Action Conference/Live. He said that while the Trump administration believes in competitive advantage, classic economists “never thought of the notion they can create scale through economic nationalism and gain advantage over another country.”