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."
Indonesia recently imposed higher import tariffs on certain cosmetics, bicycles, watches, and iron and steel products, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported Nov. 6. The new measures will place a 10% to 15% duty on cosmetic imports, a 25% to 40% duty on bicycle imports, a 10% duty on watches and up to a 20% duty on iron and steel products. As part of the changes, Indonesia also is requiring e‑commerce companies and other online vendors to share certain information on imported goods with the country’s Directorate General of Customs and Excise, including the names of the company and seller and the “specifications and quantity of imported goods,” HKTDC said.
President Joe Biden this week extended a national emergency that authorizes a ban on certain U.S. investments in Chinese military companies. Biden in 2021 expanded the ban, first issued during the Trump administration, by widening the scope of the restrictions to cover companies operating in China’s surveillance technology sector (see 2106030067).
Two House members from California asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to talk to Turkey about its new retaliatory tariffs on American almonds. In an Oct. 31 letter, Reps. John Duarte (R) and Jim Costa (D), called the tariffs "burdensome" and said they give Australia, Spain, Uzbekistan and Iran an "unjustified competitive advantage over US almonds in the Turkish market."
The Commerce Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the fifth negotiating round for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, held in Malaysia Oct. 15-24, made progress "towards high-standard outcomes" in trade, clean economy and fair economy pillars. "Officials also continued discussions on next steps for the proposed IPEF Supply Chain Agreement (Pillar II) following substantial conclusion of negotiations in May and public release of the text on September 7th," their readout said.
Is it EU "institutional rigidity," as a former assistant U.S. trade representative for Europe, Dan Mullaney, says, or unrealistic asks from the U.S. government delaying a deal on trade in steel and aluminum that could end tariff rate quotas on European exports?
For all the talk of a climate club, where trade among countries inside the club is privileged, panelists at the Niskanen Center said the failure of the U.S. and the EU to reach an agreement on green steel in two years of talking shows how far off that possibility is.
After a meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President Joe Biden, the two sides publicly acknowledged they wouldn't meet their Oct. 31 deadline to complete a Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum, which is meant to keep out non-market overcapacity from the two markets, as well as privilege trade in green metals between them.
Katrin Kuhlmann, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University, and Devi Ariyani, the executive director of the Indonesia Service Dialogue Council, both said they hope the World Trade Organization's moratorium on e-commerce duties is extended, during a Peterson Institute for International Economics event on Oct. 18. Although the moratorium has been regularly extended since 1998, a few countries are preparing to introduce tariffs on digitally transferred goods before the moratorium's expiration in March 2024, Cecilia Malmström, a nonresident senior fellow at PIIE, said at the event.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope issued a joint statement ahead of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's visit with President Joe Biden, asking them to "definitively reject protectionism," which the groups said is on the rise, due to "misinformed narratives about industrial decline." She will be in Washington Oct. 20.