The U.S. trade representative and India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal have been talking on the phone, with the goal of trading a return to the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program for better agricultural access, according to two sources following the trade talks. The original industry complaints about market access filed with USTR, requesting that India be expelled from GSP privileges were from the medical device industry and from the dairy industry. A lawyer following the trade talks said that "there's talk -- and this is still a very contentious issue" -- that the pricing controls on medical devices, such as stents, would be changed in India.
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
Rep. Ron Kind, co-chairman of the New Democrats' trade task force, said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has done a good job on outreach, and sounding sympathetic to Democrats' complaints about enforceability, labor and other issues they want changed in the NAFTA rewrite. But Kind, who was speaking to reporters on a conference call from the Midwest on Sept. 4, said that "for some reason there's been a reluctance on sharing paper, putting words down" that would change the trade deal to satisfy these requests.
Almost half of companies that responded to the U.S.-China Business Council's annual survey on the business climate in China said they have lost sales in China since the trade war began. The most common reason is because of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports to China, according to these 100 multinational firms based in the U.S. Another third said they lost sales because of U.S. tariffs.
LIz Truss, the secretary of state for international trade in the United Kingdom, said her country is looking forward to "leaving the straitjacket of the EU," and said that a free trade agreement with the U.S. "is the inevitable next step." Truss, who met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during her visit to Washington, said they're trying to "get things moving."
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, raised the possibility that he would not be able to broker a compromise between the two approaches on restraining the president's ability to levy tariffs under Section 232. While he said his goal is to have a committee meeting in late September or early October that would take up a "Grassley-Wyden" version, he said if that can't happen, he will bring forward competing bills and allow lots of amendments to shape them.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who led a trip to Mexico with nine other House members last week, said that everyone came away impressed with Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Blumenauer said that in his opinion, the entire Mexican Cabinet is clearly committed to changing labor laws in Mexico so that its workers can be better paid. "Lots of money was made [from NAFTA], but workers in the United States, workers in Mexico, are no better off in inflation-adjusted terms," he said.
Five years of data exclusivity for biologics, an end to panel blocking and undefined "mechanisms and resources" to monitor and enforce labor and environmental laws in Mexico are the core of what the House Democrats have asked the Trump administration to change in its NAFTA rewrite. The House Democrats' working group revealed more of what it is asking for in a report sent to the Speaker's office and released publicly July 26. In that report, they wrote, "It is time for the administration to present its proposals and to show its commitment to passing the new NAFTA... ."
Of the 10 Congress members who traveled to Mexico last weekend to evaluate the NAFTA rewrite as part of a congressional delegation, one was already planning to vote for the deal, others were leaning yes, and some others have always opposed free trade deals. For some of those who were leaning yes, their conversations with government officials and institutions that tackle environmental problems near the border moved them closer to voting yes. For others who were already skeptical, they returned even more skeptical.
Over the year since the European Union and the U.S. agreed to pursue trade talks, the two sides "have actually made some decent progress" on regulatory cooperation in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, but "where we are stuck is on industrial tariffs," said Sabine Weyand, director general for trade at the European Commission.
The House of Representatives intends to vote on Senate resolutions to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates next week, but Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., acknowledged that these restrictions will not become law, because they do not have enough support to override a veto. The Senate vote was 53-45. He said the vote is still important to show that Congress disapproves of how the government of Saudi Arabia is conducting itself.