Singapore recently completed negotiations with South American trade bloc Mercosur that are expected to lower tariffs on a range of products traded between the two sides, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported Aug. 19. The deal includes reduced tariff commitments and initiatives to cooperate on intellectual property rights and competition policy, the report said. HKTDC said Singapore’s trade with Mercosur represents nearly half of its total trade with Latin America.

The U.K. and India recently completed their fifth round of free trade agreement negotiations and hope to conclude a majority of the talks by the end of October, the U.K. said this week. The latest round of negotiations featured “detailed draft treaty text discussions” in 15 policy areas.

The U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments at regulations.gov on what its officials should talk to Kenya about in the areas of:

Canada's trade minister, Mary Ng, announced that Canada will launch a USMCA dispute with the U.S. over the continued antidumping and countervailing duties on some Canadian softwood lumber exports.

In filings at the USMCA Secretariat, Mexico and Canada say the Uniform Regulations for USMCA are clear, and say that " roll-up applies to the calculation of [regional value content] RVC for a vehicle. It obliges Parties to take 'no account' of the non-originating materials contained in an originating good when that good is used in the subsequent production of another good."

Senior administration officials said that President Joe Biden didn't talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping about whether he wants to make any changes to tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese exports over the course of a two-hour call.

The U.S. should enter into a free trade agreement with the government of Taiwan "by the end of next year," former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said during a July 26 Atlantic Council webinar. The former secretary, now on the board of the think tank, went on to say that not only should the U.S. pursue an agreement with Taiwan, but that America should persuade its European allies to do the same, regardless of pushback from China.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai asked for consultations with Mexico over a 2021 amendment to Mexico's Electric Power Industry Law that privileges the state-owned electric utility, and over 2019 and June 2022 actions that privilege PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil and gas company.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that all the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) partner countries met July 13 and 14 in Singapore for the first real discussions of the issues covered by the framework. The agency said the 165 delegates had positive and constructive dialogue.

Just as the U.S. trade representative declined to continue work toward a traditional free trade agreement with the U.K. begun during the previous administration, current USTR Katherine Tai announced July 14 that trade talks with Kenya will deal with trade facilitation, digital trade, science-based sanitary and phytosanitary rules and rooting out forced labor in supply chains -- not reducing tariffs on either side.