Three officials from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative are visiting Peru this week to participate in meetings of the Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) group of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization, USTR said (here). U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman is visiting Lima, Pucallpa, and Arequipa, from May 15 to 17, and deputy U.S. trade representatives Michael Punke and Robert Holleyman are traveling to Arequipa from May 16 to 18, USTR said. Froman is also discussing “environmental enforcement efforts” with Peruvian officials.
U.S.-Albania trade rose 59 percent, to $190.8 million, from 2014 to 2015, and Albanian companies last year exported $2.9 million worth of goods under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), an official from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in remarks May 11 during the WTO’s second review of the country’s trade policy and practices (here). The official noted that Albania has switched to a digital system for customs and border compliance, streamlining import processing and “substantially” reducing fees, and lauded the country for ratifying the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on May 10 (see 1605100010).
The U.S. and Uruguay on May 11 convened the seventh meeting of the bilateral Trade and Investment Council in Montevideo under the U.S.-Uruguay Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative John Melle met with Uruguayan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Luis Cancela Gomez, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a press release. Melle and Gomez discussed issues including trade facilitation, improving opportunities for small and medium enterprises, the digital economy, and market access, USTR said. The next meeting will be held in Washington next year.
The U.S. is claiming that China’s antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of U.S. broiler chickens violate World Trade Organization rules, and plans to file an associated challenge through the multilateral body, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said (here). “These duties, which act as high taxes on American poultry exports to China, have remained despite a WTO report that previously found China to be breaching its WTO obligations,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement. “Now, the United States is challenging these taxes on behalf of American poultry producers and the hundreds of thousands of people employed in the poultry industry.” This is the 12th WTO case the Obama administration has brought against China, said the statement.
Composed of officials from both countries, the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement Joint Committee met on May 3 to review implementation of the deal, as well as efforts to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (here). Pertaining to the bilateral deal, the two sides discussed functionality related to specific goods, services, and investment issues, and ways to promote expansion of trade and investment between the two countries, USTR said.
Short supply list and origin verification were among areas of discussion within the textile provisions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as of March, according to a purportedly leaked TTIP document (here). Neither the U.S. nor EU confirmed authenticity of some 13 chapters of the TTIP text allegedly leaked this week, but both sides criticized conclusions made based on the texts (see 1605020032).
On April 29, an interim rule issued by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will be codified into a final rule establishing a petition process to supplement the normal annual request cycle for public comments on whether African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) beneficiary countries meet eligibility requirements, USTR said (here). Between March 18, when the interim rule took effect, and April 18, USTR received no public comments on the proposed final rule, which will be implemented without change, the agency said.
Switzerland is now on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's lower-tier watch list for copyright and other intellectual property rights violations, USTR said April 27 in its annual Special 301 report on the global status of IP rights enforcement (here). China and India remain on USTR's mid-tier priority watch list, which includes nine other countries, because ongoing IP rights enforcement problems outweigh efforts to reform both nations' IP laws. USTR again chose not to include any countries on its higher-tier priority foreign country list.
The risk that global steel overcapacity poses to people’s livelihoods provides U.S. negotiators with a very powerful narrative to inject into efforts to convince Chinese government officials to adopt policies to reduce its steel glut, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Robert Holleyman said during a panel discussion on April 26 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. During the panel, Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs Nathan Sheets said the U.S. is “vigorously” engaging with China on the overcapacity issue. Holleyman expressed a need for the U.S. to verify that Chinese state-owned enterprises, which he said are crucial to China's prolific steel industry, operate according to market principles. Holleyman added that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and other agencies are “very active” in discussions about how to handle China’s request for granting it market economy status in antidumping duty cases upon the expiration of its World Trade Organization accession protocol. The protocol says the country will remain a non-market economy until Dec. 11, when the provision allowing the methodology behind that status expires. Holleyman said it was premature to comment on what designation the U.S. will recommend for China, only adding, “It is an active discussion.”
Despite the inability of this week’s high-level meeting of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Brussels to secure serious Chinese commitments to help reduce excess global steel capacity, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker pledged to work “directly” with Beijing on the issue in bilateral and multilateral fora in the “weeks and months ahead,” the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said (here). “As we heard at a hearing last week on overcapacity convened by the Administration, the viability of the global steel industry has come under intense pressure from excess production and capacity in China, and there are already significant human costs associated with the current steel market downturn,” Froman and Pritzker said in a joint statement. “This is a global issue and meaningful solutions will require global action, including from steel-producing countries, especially China.” Governments directly affected by global steel overcapacity will have “no choice” but to take trade remedy action against China unless the country acts decisively to reduce excess capacity, Froman and Pritzker said.