China again extended its Section 301 retaliatory tariff exclusion period for 12 U.S. agricultural products, including certain shrimp, whey, fishmeal, alfalfa and hardwood products, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service said in a recent report. The exclusions, which were set to expire Dec. 31, will continue through July 31. Beijing originally imposed the tariffs in retaliation for Section 301 tariffs announced by the Trump administration on certain Chinese goods.
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will touch on some trade issues during a planned meeting in California on Nov. 15, but the two leaders won’t delve into specifics, a senior administration official said during a call with reporters last week. The two sides aren’t expecting a “long list of outcomes or deliverables” to result from the meeting, the official said. “The goals here really are about managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open."
China again extended its Section 301 retaliatory tariff exclusion period for sorbitol and other non-U.S. agricultural goods, the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service said in a September report. The exclusion period was scheduled to expire Sept. 15 but now will remain in effect until April 20, 2024. USDA said this is the sixth time China has extended the exclusion period for sorbitol, adding that the U.S. was the second-largest supplier of sorbitol to China in 2022, with Chinese imports reaching $1.4 million.
Analysts from the Tax Foundation and from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that hiking tariffs on all imports by 10% would not boost domestic manufacturing, with CSIS's Bill Reinsch noting "you would be hard pressed to find an economist who thinks they make any sense."
Taiwan is requiring a certificate of origin and customs approval before certain Chinese-origin chipmaking equipment can be shipped to the U.S. The requirement will apply to shipments of certain “machine tools operated by laser processes, of a kind used solely or principally for the manufacture of printed circuits, printed circuit assemblies, parts” or “parts of automatic data processing machines,” Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade announced this month.
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The Biden administration will complete its review of the Section 301 tariffs "this fall," U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai wrote to senators, and while she did not commit to any course of action, she wrote: "As part of the 4-Year Review of the Section 301 tariffs, USTR is reviewing the effectiveness of the tariffs in achieving the objectives of the investigation, as well as the effect of the tariffs on consumers, workers, and the U.S. economy at large. As part of this review, we are considering the existing tariffs structure and how to make the tariffs more strategic in light of impacts on sectors of the U.S. economy as well [as] the goal of increasing domestic manufacturing."
The World Trade Organization is steadily headed towards irrelevancy to global trade and is facing a "long, slow sunset," said Peter Harrell, former senior director for international economics and competitiveness at the White House, during remarks at the Georgetown International Trade Update on June 13.
In more than four hours of questioning during a hearing March 24 before the House Ways and Means Committee, no member of Congress advocated for lessening tariffs on Chinese goods under Section 301, or for reopening exclusions applications.
Fourteen Republican senators, led by Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio, wrote to the treasury secretary and secretary of state as the Cabinet officials traveled to China to meet with President Xi Jinping.