The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is requesting comments on how China and Russia are complying with their World Trade Organization commitments, including in its import regulation, export regulation, subsidies, non-tariff barriers, intellectual property rights enforcement, rule of law issues, and trade facilitation, or other issues.
The Biden administration should seek to remove trade barriers that are making it difficult for American producers of liquor and liquefied natural gas (LNG) to export their products to India, a member of Congress said July 23.
The Canadian press noted that Canada is working to convince officials that might serve in a future Trump administration to spare Canadian goods from a global 10% tariff, but former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who recently traveled to Canada, has said Canada won't necessarily be exempted.
Danielle Fumagalli was named acting assistant U.S. trade representative for Japan, Korea, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Affairs, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a news release July 3. Fumagalli had been deputy assistant USTR in the same office, and had helped negotiate the U.S.-Japan Critical Minerals Agreement.
Almost three years after environmental groups asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to ask the tri-national Commission on Environmental Cooperation to establish a formal factual record of Mexico's failure to enforce its ban on gillnets in the Upper Gulf of California in Mexico (see 2108130052), that commission will begin such a fact-finding mission.
The gaps in trade policies between the U.S. and Europe, despite their agreement on the problems, and the difficulty of improving trade relations with major developing countries were grappled with this week by a panel of experts from the U.S. and Europe.
A joint statement from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the president of Kazakhstan said that the Central Asian country wants to cooperate on trade facilitation, including harmonizing and digitizing customs procedures, and that both countries committed to "make concrete progress in the near term to include additional U.S. meat and poultry production facilities, streamline the issuance of digital export certificates, and work to facilitate increased shipments of U.S. agricultural equipment to Kazakhstan."
Canada's Trade Minister Mary Ng, under questions from parties to the left and right of her Liberal party, as well as the Québécois party, said the fact that there are outstanding disagreements between Canada and the U.S. on U.S. trade remedies on softwood lumber, on auto rules of origin and on Canadian dairy import restrictions does not mean that Canada will get big-footed in the free trade review.
House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., during a hearing on competition with China in the Western Hemisphere, argued that the shortages experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic show that businesses should move supply chains to the Western Hemisphere.
Trade talks between the U.S. and Argentina this week covered customs facilitation, lithium and copper, and agricultural concerns on both sides.