The debt ceiling deal passed by Congress has averted either an economic catastrophe or a minor headache, depending on who you talk to. It’s more likely that a pretty serious catastrophe was averted. But there was, in my view, never a serious chance that the US would default on its sovereign debt. More likely, some […]
Two separate developments suggest that the Biden administration may have concerns that more tariffs would damage the US economy by harming consumers. First, we saw the president suspend action to impose additional tariffs on solar cells and modules from four countries in the face of an antidumping “circumvention” proceeding. Circumvention determines whether operations in third […]
Since 1997, the US Department of Commerce has had a regulation permitting an “expedited review” of subsidy determinations in countervailing duty investigations. The importers of subject merchandise in these cases are often denied individual subsidy rates because Commerce lacks the resources to investigate every company. To compensate for the department’s insufficient resources, any company not […]
We have a few confrontations this week. President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy are scheduled to meet this week on resolving the debt ceiling confrontation. Some sort of compromise seems likely, but a cataclysm involving government default is hardly out of the question. The time for agreement is nigh—US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has moved […]
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently gave an important speech on the direction of trade policy. It was not his speech alone, but part of a coordinated roll-out of the Biden administration on trade policy, including contributions from President Biden, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. It’s worth looking at […]
The United States and European Union are quarrelling about several trade issues. None is more far-reaching than the trade impact of measures to address climate change. While some still doubt the need or ability of the world’s nations to tax or subsidize their way out of human-caused global warming, governments, at least in Europe and […]
The World Trade Organization keeps on rolling along. Last week, the current director general (DG) of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, made a trip to the United States to attend the IMF annual meetings and to meet with international trade-oriented officials and business representatives. Her itinerary included addressing the Washington international trade community, […]
We’ve reached a milestone on the trade litigation front. Nearly all the cases (save two) have been decided regarding the legality of Section 301 tariffs on China and of Section 232 tariffs (and other measures) on steel and aluminum. The US government has prevailed. The Supreme Court last week declined to review one of the […]
On March 17, the Court of International Trade, the federal court with jurisdiction over most cases involving international trade regulation, issued a major ruling giving control over China tariffs to the discretion of the US Trade Representative (USTR). The case dealt with legal challenges in nearly 4,000 separate cases to the “List 3” and “List […]
The US International Trade Commission issued a report to Congress last week on the impact of the Section 232 import restrictions on steel and aluminum and the tariffs on imports from China under Section 301. The report catalogued significant injury to downstream industries. Namely, those that use steel or aluminum in manufacturing. The losses were […]
The White House recently released the president’s 2024 federal budget proposal. It is a huge document, proposing to spend nearly $7 trillion during the year beginning Oct. 1. That is a significant increase over the FY2023 budget approved by Congress. It even surpasses federal spending during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. For those oncerned […]
Mexico continues to have its problems with US relations. On March 3, former Attorney General William Barr penned a column in the Wall Street Journal about failures by Mexico to stem the drug cartels. Illegal drugs are flowing into the US over the apparently porous border. Barr recommends that the US take action reminiscent of […]
President Biden devoted a significant portion of his State of the Union address earlier this month on Buy American issues. As on most issues, “the devil is in the details,” but his general sentiment is clear. America, he believes, has sent jobs and wealth overseas by allowing Americans to buy imported products. This is a […]
Should there be limits on the power of the US Commerce Department under the antidumping laws to impose punitive and potentially prohibitive duties on imports? Last week, the Court of International Trade (CIT) placed some limits on Commerce to do so. The CIT rejected punitive duties in an antidumping investigation of utility-scale (i.e., big) wind towers from […]
Depending on when you read this, you might know who won the Super Bowl, but we know who won this week—Joe Biden. President Biden gave an effective State of the Union on Tuesday. The speech had everything his (and Bernie Sanders’) supporters could hope for: more Buy American, more equality, more populism, even more support […]
Now that the new year is one-twelfth over, the changes from last year are taking shape. In foreign policy and trade, a primary focus has changed from economics to geopolitics. Trade between the West and China, which has been the key metric for the last 20 years, has tapered off, although it remains strong. Trade […]
When President Trump imposed steel tariffs in 2018, he included an exclusion mechanism to liberate customers from tariffs on imported products that were not produced domestically. This was to permit steel-using manufacturers to continue to compete. Steel rolling mills that rely on imported slabs were among the largest users of the exclusion mechanism. When regulations […]
Last week I wrote about the US loss in the Section 232 steel and aluminum trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO). This week, the US suffered another loss—the dispute settlement proceeding under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on the Agreement’s rules of origin for automobiles. The United States has thus recently lost two […]
The United States lost a dispute in the World Trade Organization last month. This is hardly the first time. In this case, tariffs and other import restrictions on steel and aluminum imposed by President Trump in 2018 were found to violate WTO agreements. The United States argued that its invocation of “essential security interests” was […]
Donald Trump has been out of office for nearly two years. But some of his most unsustainable policies live on. Hostility to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is one. Tariffs that violate the rules of global trade is another. Immigration policy is a third. Trade is one of the most remarkable. Smart and experienced people are saying things […]
The US and the European Union have been engaging in talks designed to reduce global “overcapacity” in steelmaking. These talks stemmed from the agreement between the US and EU to change US Section 232 import measures from tariffs to tariff rate quotas (TRQs). The US has announced a plan (details are scarce) to impose higher […]
These days, there seem to be many emergencies. The impulse of government leaders often is to declare a crisis and then succumb to a dangerous tendency — don’t just stand there, DO something! Last June, the President issued a proclamation on imports of solar panels and cells, declaring a national emergency on the supply of […]
The Biden administration has, from its early days, presented a “worker-centered” trade policy. Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative (USTR), has used that term consistently. What does that mean exactly? The “worker-centered” narrative includes, as is common in most policy debates, addressing the disparate impact on minorities and the disadvantaged. When a factory closes, those […]
The Department of Commerce on Thursday published its decision that Russia was again a non-market economy (NME) in antidumping cases. The move will change fundamentally the way antidumping duties will be calculated for imports from that country. All antidumping investigations, reviews, and sunset reviews will incorporate this change in all cases over the next several […]
This past week the Biden administration released a list of questions for the public on the four-year review of the Section 301 tariffs on China. The questions and the procedures in the review reveal quite a bit about where this investigation is going, and what policy choices will be coming out after the 2022 midterm […]
People who purchase imported steel don’t like Section 232 tariffs. And domestic steel producers don’t like exclusions to the 25% duties. Recent cases have highlighted a legal problem that mirrors commercial reality. If a domestic steel producer benefits from protective tariffs, does it have a right to participate in litigation against importers challenging the denial […]
Last Friday, as Michael Cowden reported, the International Trade Commission (ITC) voted to continue antidumping orders on hot-rolled steel flat products from Australia, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Russia, the UK, and Turkey. The vote was 5-0. But by a 3-2 vote, the Commission determined that revocation of the AD and CVD orders on Brazil would […]
The international consensus on expanding international trade has shattered. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece last week in the Times outlining some of the factors that led to the demise of this consensus. In the 1990s, with the advent of NAFTA and the WTO, the prevalent view among policymakers was that trade […]
I look for connections in current events, and often they are apparent for all the world to see. One recent example—in the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August, Congress reinstated and revised the tax credit for “clean vehicles,” including electric, hybrid plug-in, and alternative fuel vehicles (such as hydrogen fuel cells). These cars are in […]
The Jones Act is in the news again. The Jones Act requires that all trade within the United States (including Puerto Rico) be carried on US-registered ships built in the United States and manned by crews composed of at least 90% American citizens or permanent residents. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas waived […]