Trade Law Daily is providing readers with some recent top stories. All articles can be found by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters during a press conference June 24 that there's strong bipartisan support for bringing back expired Section 301 exclusions, and refunding the tariffs paid since they expired.

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade Chairman Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and ranking member Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, agree that the U.S. should be in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the expert witnesses at the hearing they held June 22 showed no path to the U.S. reentering the agreement with the 11 countries that went on to seal the deal. This was despite agreement among most subcommittee members (though not Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio) and the witnesses that leaving TPP was a tactical mistake that leaves the U.S. at a trade and geopolitical disadvantage.

The Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee expressed disappointment at the Generalized System of Preferences bill introduced by the Trade Subcommittee chairman, so they introduced their own version, which is identical to the amendment that passed the Senate with 91 votes. The bill, introduced June 22 by the top Republicans on the committee and the subcommittee, also renews the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, but with a few more products removed from the list after additional objections in the House. According to an analysis by Crowell and Moring, the Senate MTB covers 1,423 products, and the House Democrats' version covers 1,363 products. A spokesperson for Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., said the Republican bill covers the same MTB list as the Democrats' bill.

The following are short summaries of recent CBP “NY” rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:

The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 14-20.

Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade Chairman Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and ranking member Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, agree that the U.S. should be in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the expert witnesses at the hearing they held June 22 showed no path to the U.S. reentering the agreement with the 11 countries that went on to seal the deal. This was despite agreement among most subcommittee members (though not Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio) and the witnesses that leaving TPP was a tactical mistake that leaves the U.S. at a trade and geopolitical disadvantage.

Opposing sides in the Section 301 litigation sparred heatedly in the closing minutes of oral argument Thursday (see 2106170047) about the role the plaintiffs’ steering committee should play should the U.S. Court of International Trade grant the motion of sample-case plaintiffs HMTX and Jasco for a preliminary injunction to freeze the liquidations of unliquidated customs entries from China with Lists 3 and 4A tariff exposure. DOJ’s May 14 “alternative proposed order” would require the steering committee to furnish the government a spreadsheet with the import data that Customs and Border Protection would need to suspend liquidations, and to update it every 30 days (see 2105160001). “The government proposes having the steering committee play a role that it never volunteered to take on,” said Matthew Nicely, Akin Gump’s lead HMTX-Jasco lawyer. “It was never this court’s intention to have the steering committee do the government’s job, which is exactly what the government proposes.” DOJ’s proposal “is simply untenable,” he said. The government tried to “think of any possible way to make this process easier,” responded DOJ trial attorney Jamie Shookman of the rationale for proposing the steering committee role. “One that seemed sort of easy to take on and manageable by plaintiffs was this first step of compiling the importers and the information CBP would need to suspend their entries.” CBP is staring at the possibility of processing “thousands” of suspension requests, much of that by hand, if the court grants the injunction, she said. Nicely replied that “the amount of work here” is of DOJ’s “own making” for refusing to support a refund stipulation if plaintiffs win the litigation, as DOJ has done in previous cases. The government “undertook an unlawful imposition of Section 301 duties on a massive amount of trade,” he said. “That was not the plaintiffs who did that. That was the government who did that, so now they’re in a position of having to defend it.”