Jacob Kopnick

House Ways and Means Committee chief trade counsel Katherine Tai was confirmed by the Senate as U.S. trade representative on March 17, by a 98-0 vote. Politicians from both parties, trade skeptics and export-focused trade associations all hailed her promotion to the Biden administration Cabinet. She is the first woman of color to be USTR.

The coming weeks will mark some important deadlines in the Section 301 litigation inundating the U.S. Court of International Trade after months of inertia. New complaints keep trickling in at the rate of about one a day to join the roughly 3,500 on file beginning since mid-September, virtually all seeking to get the lists 3 and 4A Chinese tariffs vacated and the duties refunded. Many thousands more importers are represented in the filings.

President Donald Trump didn't get China to agree to much in the way of structural changes, panelists said, but Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler said he put China front and center on the agenda, which was good. “He was really willing to take on the business community when it came to China,” she said. Cutler, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for more than 25 years, said that when she was at USTR, one of her frustrations in trying to negotiate with China was that U.S. “companies were pretty conflicted. They liked the … money they were making. They wanted us to be quote, unquote tough with China, but they didn’t want to be part of the get-tough strategy. Our hands were tied in a way.”

Even though the Joe Biden administration will have a very different approach to trade than did the Trump administration, that will not mean a wholesale rejection of what its predecessors did, analysts said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar Jan. 21.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is not taxing French cosmetics or handbags, as it wants to have “a coordinated response” to all the Digital Service Tax cases, the agency said Jan. 7. It also released its findings on India's, Turkey's and Italy's proposed DSTs, with no proposed actions.

The head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam said businesses there don't know whether U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will conclude that Vietnam has been a trade cheat through currency manipulation but not put a tariff number on it; put a tariff number but not start collecting; or implement tariffs before the new administration takes over Jan. 20.

The additional Section 301 tariffs on goods from the European Union announced late Dec. 30 (see 2012300062) will take effect “with respect to products that are entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 12, 2021,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a notice. USTR said in a Dec. 30 news release that it would increase the tariffs as part of the ongoing World Trade Organization dispute over Airbus subsidies. The announcement disrupts settlement talks and “exceeds the amount of retaliation authorised by the WTO,” a European Commission spokesperson emailed. “The Commission is analysing the data in detail and will look at all options available on how to respond.”

Witnesses from the furniture and cabinet sector in both Vietnam and the U.S. argued that Vietnam has greatly improved its governance over illegal imports of tropical wood and, to whatever degree illegal imports still exist, that wood is not then exported to U.S. buyers.

The 22-person witness list for the Dec. 29 virtual Section 301 investigative hearing into allegations that Vietnam deliberately undervalued its currency to thwart U.S. economic growth is stacked heavily with people on record as opposing remedial tariffs on Vietnamese imports. Prehearing submissions in docket USTR-2020-0037 foretell some will also testify that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is singling out the wrong country for Section 301 currency manipulation review and is doing so for ulterior motives.

The Consumer Technology Association would be “extremely affected and disappointed” by any Trump administration rush to impose Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on Vietnamese imports before leaving office, President Gary Shapiro said in a Dec. 16 interview. “Our industry has suffered, in the national interest in a sense, because of U.S. positions taken on China,” he said, and additional tariffs on goods from Vietnam would be an unexpected, secondary blow.