The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 20-26:
Section 301 (too broad)
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
As senators who support subsidies to build semiconductor chips in the U.S. continue to say the trade title differences are holding up the bill, and that it should drop out, House negotiators say it's not time to give up yet.
A lawyer who has represented clients whose goods were detained over suspicion of forced labor says the new document laying out the strategy on enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is not earth-shattering.
The chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee highlighted in her opening remarks Congress' directive to the U.S. trade representative to establish an exclusion process for Section 301 tariffs. But when Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., tried to ask USTR Katherine Tai about how her office is "working to comply with this directive," Tai evaded the question and talked about the deliberations in the administration on whether there should be a partial rollback of the tariffs on the vast majority of Chinese imports.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has 32 extra days, until Aug. 1, to file its lists 3 and 4A tariff remand results in the Section 301 litigation, a three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade said in a June 22 order. DOJ, on USTR’s behalf, asked for a 60-day extension to Aug. 30 to fix its Administrative Procedure Act violations, citing the volume of work required to meet the remand order, plus the agency’s limited staff resources and the additional projects compounding its workload (see 2206210042).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 13-19:
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said that he wants to get the conference negotiations done for the China package, because the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) has "some important trade aspects."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit held in a June 16 opinion that window covering manufacturer Springs Window Fashions did not illegally fire customs broker Jennifer Lam-Quang-Vinh over her position that the company had to pay Section 301 China tariffs. Judges Diane Sykes, Michael Brennan and Michael Scudder said that the record evidence does not support Lam's position that she was fired in retaliation (Jennifer Lam-Quang-Vinh v. Springs Window Fashions, 7th Cir. #21-2665).
The Alliance for American Manufacturing told the administration that it's "absurd" to blame Section 301 tariffs for inflation, given they started years before inflation began to rise. "U.S. consumers would see little to no benefit from tariff roll backs and any erosion of tariffs will benefit China’s Communist Party and China’s manufacturing sector, which would make up the difference by increasing its prices," the group wrote. It said that all tariffs should remain. "AAM strongly supports allowing USTR to continue its fact-based exclusion process without congressional mandates or any other political interference that predetermines an outcome. While an accessible and transparent exclusion process is essential for trade enforcement actions, unwarranted tariff relief may very well signal the demise of a U.S. company that is seeking to establish a market foothold or one that has reinvented itself to fill gaps in our domestic supply chains," it wrote.