Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program could happen either by packaging the bill with an omnibus spending bill, or, if Congress just passes another temporary spending bill, by attachment to a tax extenders bill.
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.
The Hong Kong ambassador to the World Trade Organization told the U.S. ambassador there that Hong Kong is initiating a dispute, and wants formal bilateral consultations on the U.S. decision to require goods made in Hong Kong to be marked 'Made in China.'
The Democrat who would lead the Finance Committee if the Senate majority changes parties after the election blasted President Donald Trump over labor, auto rules of origin, dairy and biotech export regulations, in a letter that said the benefits promised in renegotiating NAFTA have not been delivered. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in the Oct. 30 letter that “the Administration has yet to bring any enforcement action under either the state-to-state dispute settlement or the new Rapid Response Mechanism despite the persistence of labor violations in Mexico.”
The U.S. supports South Korea's Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee rather than the Nigerian candidate for director-general, even though the latter has more support, because the World Trade Organization “must be led with someone with real, hands-on experience in the field,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in an Oct. 28 statement, saying “the WTO is badly in need of major reform,” and that Yoo is a “bona fide trade expert.”
The World Trade Organization member countries cleared the way for the European Union to impose tariffs on $4 billion worth of U.S. exports because of past tax breaks for the Boeing Company. In the EU's Oct. 26 response to the development, Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis reiterated that the EU would prefer a settlement that drops tariffs on EU goods rather than imposing tariffs on U.S. exports. “The European Commission is preparing the countermeasures, in close consultation with our Member States. As I have made clear all along, our preferred outcome is a negotiated settlement with the U.S. To that end, we continue to engage intensively with our American counterparts, and I am in regular contact with U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer,” he said in the release.
A recent Congressional Research Service report on agricultural gains in the Japan mini-deal said that while it does match the Trans-Pacific Partnership in many ways, there are some significant shortfalls, including products under tariff-rate quotas in the broader multilateral deal that aren't in the mini-deal.
In a think tank effort that seems to assume a change in Washington, though never explicitly says it, the Peterson Institute for International Economics says there should be a return to more conservative use of export controls and entity lists to manage the threat of Chinese access to advanced technology for nefarious purposes. Martin Chorzempa, a PIIE research fellow, discussed a memo he authored to a future Commerce undersecretary for export controls in the next administration, during an Oct. 22 webinar at PIIE.
Talks toward a comprehensive trade agreement with the United Kingdom would likely continue under a Joe Biden administration, though when a deal could be reached is unclear, K&L Gates partner Stacy Ettinger said during a webinar on how trade policy would change if there is an administration change after the election, or progress if there is a second Trump administration. Ettinger, a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., before joining the private sector, was joined by former White House trade staffer Clete Willems, now at Akin Gump, during a webinar Oct. 20 hosted by American University's law school.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the trade facilitation agreement that the U.S. and Brazil signed Oct. 19 is very similar to the USMCA trade facilitation chapter, and that traders should expect more incremental progress in coming months. “There’s a lot more that needs to be done,” Lighthizer said during a U.S. Chamber of Commerce program Oct. 20. “We have ongoing negotiations on ethanol. Brazilians like to talk about sugar. There’s a variety of things in the agriculture area.”
One of the two finalists for the director-general position at the World Trade Organization said Oct. 20 that when trade ministers gather for the next ministerial -- which may happen in June next year -- they should agree on a process for reforming the dispute settlement system. That suggests there will be no binding dispute resolution for at least two years at the WTO, if not longer.