China dwelled on trade more than the U.S. did in the countries' respective summaries of the more than three-hour call between their presidents. But one think-tank author said China would like the tariffs to go away, "but will not pay too much to make it happen."
Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.
A “rapid” increase in cotton prices during the past few weeks has sparked anxiety across China’s cotton industry supply chain and likely will result in intervention from Beijing, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service reported Oct. 8. The country likely will announce an “additional batch of sliding-scale cotton import quota” to be allocated to relevant enterprises, USDA said, adding that steps the government uses to “replenish state reserves” could affect China’s cotton imports. The rising prices have particularly impacted the Xinjiang region, USDA said, which produces the majority of the nation’s cotton and has been accused of using forced labor.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai called on the World Trade Organization to conclude the fisheries subsidies agreement, and said that discussions in Geneva about how to revive the Appellate Body should instead focus on what could incentivize countries to reach an agreement before years and years of litigation.
Nineteen of the 25 House Ways and Means Democrats, led by Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to continue to push workers' rights at the World Trade Organization, in a letter sent Oct. 12. "[W]e write today to emphasize the importance of including labor and worker rights in the agenda. We support the Biden Administration’s focus on a worker-centered trade policy and were encouraged by the forced labor proposal proposed during the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations. For far too long, labor issues have not been central to the work of the WTO despite clear indications of its prominence in the foundational legal text of the organization as well as Congress’ intent for the WTO to address labor and worker rights," they said. They also asked her to convince other countries to form a working group on labor standards.
The U.S. and the European Union agreed to develop “convergent” export controls on sensitive technologies and work more closely on investment screening, the White House said in a fact sheet released after the Sept. 29 inaugural meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (see 2109270027). Although the White House didn’t name specific technologies that could come under more export control or investment scrutiny, it stressed the importance of semiconductor supply chain cooperation and said the two sides agreed to “achieve concrete outcomes by the next meeting.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's recent announcement that the EC intends to propose a ban on products made using forced labor indicates a further step toward forced labor prevention, international law firm Mayer Brown said. In her Sept. 15 annual State of the Union speech, von der Leyen said that “doing business around the world ... can never be done at the expense of people’s dignity and freedom” and that the EU “can never accept that [25 million globally] are forced to make products -- and that these products then end up for sale in shops here in Europe.”
Hong Kong-based apparel company, Changji Esquel Textile (CJE), should not be granted a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List, the U.S. argued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Resuming litigation after talks between Commerce and CJE broke down (see 2108300058), the Department of Justice said CJE is unlikely to succeed in its case and that the company has not established certain and imminent irreparable harm (Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd., et al. v. Gina M. Raimondo, et al., D.D.C. #21-1798).
After talks with the Commerce Department broke down over when Hong Kong-based apparel company Changji Esquel Textile (CJE) could be dropped from the agency's entity list, CJE resumed its litigation against the designation in federal court. The company, part of the Esquel group, on Aug. 27 filed a motion to re-set a hearing on a preliminary injunction against its placement on the list.
Although there were some specific complaints about how USMCA has gone in its first year -- especially what witnesses and senators said was an anemic effort to get Mexico to change its stance on genetically modified agricultural crops -- much of the hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on July 27 explored how USMCA should be seen as a model for future trade agreements.