The European Commission is seeking input from private parties on how an increase in customs duties on products from the U.S. in response to the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum from the EU would affect Europeans, it said in a notice. The EC is considering "suspension of tariff concessions under Article 8 of the [World Trade Organization] Agreement on Safeguards" and "imposition of increased customs duties on certain products," it said. "The Commission's intention is to ensure that applied additional customs duties are set at the appropriate level taking into account future developments," such as an exemption for the EU, it said.
The World Customs Organization's Harmonized System Committee is working to prepare for the next harmonized tariff schedule coming in 2022, the WCO said in a March 16 news release. The HSC recently met in Brussels and adopted "four sets of amendments to the Explanatory Notes and approved 36 new Classification Opinions, and just one Classification Opinion was deleted," it said. Also, "as part of the work to prepare the Seventh Edition of the HS (HS 2022), 30 sets of amendments to the Nomenclature were adopted." The committee "took 275 classification decisions (251 of which related to pharmaceutical products (International Nonproprietary Names, INN))," WCO said.
The European Union recently issued the following trade-related release (notices of most significance will be given separate headlines):
There's been momentum in the NAFTA negotiations, but "we still think it is likely the president could withdraw," said Brian Kingston, a vice president with the Business Council of Canada. President Donald Trump has threatened to leave the deal (see 1708310011). The Canadian government has made a lot of diplomatic outreach in the U.S. Congress recently, and Kingston is hopeful that lawmakers would just sit on the request and not take action, he said during an event at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies on March 15. That would result in a "zombie NAFTA," he said. "Not an ideal outcome." An announcement to withdraw is really a six months' notice of withdrawal, and some believe the U.S. cannot end NAFTA tariff rates without a congressional vote to set replacement rates (see 1711150031).
The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters:
The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of March 14 (some may also be given separate headlines):
In recent editions of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of March 12 (some may also be given separate headlines):
The World Trade Organization remains relevant and important, said Alan Wolff, deputy director-general of the WTO, in a Council on Foreign Relations blog post. Wolff's defense came in response to a provocative piece by CFR's Edward Alden that said the WTO's role was further diminished by President Donald Trump's Section 232 tariffs. While there are serious issues with the appeals system, the WTO has seen progress in negotiations, Wolff said. Two years ago in Nairobi, countries agreed to create a trade facilitation agreement, ban agricultural export subsidies and expand the information technology agreement (see 1512220018). He also pointed to e-commerce as an area of progress at Buenos Aires, but little was agreed to then (see 1712130048).
The World Customs Organization issued the following release on commercial trade and related matters: