Chamber Argues MTB Renewal, New FTAs Will Aid Manufacturers
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's John Murphy said that manufacturers are some of the biggest supporters of free trade deals because half their goods are exported.
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But, in addition to negotiating free trade agreements, Murphy, the Chamber's senior vice president for international policy, said Congress needs to "pass the long-delayed Miscellaneous Tariff Bill." He said the International Trade Commission "leads a rigorous vetting process established by Congress to confirm that products proposed for tariff relief are not made in the U.S. or are unavailable in sufficient quantities to meet U.S. manufacturers’ needs."
Murphy was critical of the proposal of House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who wants the next MTB cycle to exclude finished goods. Murphy wrote that it's holding up the approval, and argued: "there’s no way MTBs can flood the U.S. market with duty-free imports of finished goods: There’s already a strict limit on the volume of any particular goods category ($500,000 annually) they can cover."