The Senate Banking Committee Jan. 19 approved the nominations of four Export-Import Bank officials and one official with the Commerce Department’s Foreign Commercial Service. The committee advanced all five for consideration before the full Senate: Reta Jo Lewis, for president of Ex-Im; Judith Pryor, for first vice president of Ex-Im; Owen Herrnstadt, for member of Ex-Im’s board of directors; Parisa Salehi, for Ex-Im inspector general; and Arun Venkataraman, for assistant secretary of Commerce and director general of the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the International Trade Commission to analyze the results of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, including which participating countries export the most, both commodities and value-added products, and identifying tariff-eligible products where the preference was not claimed, as well as imports of products not covered by the program. Neal asked the ITC to identify countries and sectors that are heavy users of AGOA, and that do not use AGOA much "and broad factors that explain this."
Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., cosponsored a bill that would ban the import and export of bear viscera, a bill designed to discourage bear poaching in order to harvest bear bile, used in traditional Chinese medicines. The bill, introduced Jan. 11, says that while the black bear population in the U.S. is stable, government officials have found that U.S. bears have been poached for their gallbladders.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., joined by 14 Democrats on the committee, is asking that the Biden administration develop an action plan to improve the working conditions of Haitian migrant workers in the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic, including potentially banning the import of that sugar under the ban on goods made with forced labor.
Eight Republicans and two Democrats introduced a bill in the Senate that would prohibit the Agriculture Department from administering a rule on the importation of sheep and goats (see 1607150025). The rule was first proposed in 2016, and the final rule was announced Dec. 2 (see 2112020022). Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and his co-sponsors introduced the bill a week later, and its text was recently published. A bipartisan House companion bill, with 17 sponsors and co-sponsors, was also introduced in December.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said that he and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., talked Jan. 12 about how to move on a renewal for the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill. Neal, who spoke with International Trade Today in a hallway interview at the Capitol Jan. 13, said that he talked with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai about the legislation this week, as well. Both the GSP and MTB lapsed more than a year ago.
Agricultural and energy market access in Mexico are of concern to Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, as he talks about the need to enforce USMCA's provisions, but he dismissed Mexico's concern that the U.S. is not following the treaty's text as it lays out rules for imported automobiles and light trucks to enter the U.S. tariff-free.
The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and that committee's chairman, as well as the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, urged the deputy U.S. trade representative to press Mexico and Canada on market access issues for the energy and agricultural sectors, and the senators also complained about barriers for the telecom, pharmaceutical and television industries in either Mexico or Canada. Deputy USTR Jayme White is meeting with Canadian and Mexican counterparts this week.
Center for a New American Security Senior Fellow Emily Kilcrease asked Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., co-sponsor of a bill asking the Biden administration to come up with a strategy to counter China's economic coercion, (see 2110180036), how he'd like to see the U.S. respond to economic coercion from China. Should we hike tariffs? Offer direct assistance to affected companies? Make a statement?
All the Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee, led by ranking member Mike Crapo of Idaho, are questioning the administration's decision to trade off extraterritorial taxation of U.S.-headquartered companies (Pillar One) in exchange for a global minimum corporate income tax (Pillar Two) and the removal of digital services taxes.