Legislation from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J., would have the State and Commerce departments report to Congress on how each is working with allies to secure supply chains for semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging, large capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals and active ingredients for those drugs, and critical minerals. The bill, whose text was published May 6, also directs the administration to develop common standards for transparent, trusted and sustainable supply chains and to end reliance on China for these goods. About 80% of critical mineral processing is in China and China is dominant in active ingredients for pills.
Hours before the Senate was due to consider his non-binding instruction to negotiators on the China package to retain language directing the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to reopen a Section 301 exclusion process, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., warned that if USTR didn't open such a process if the language becomes law, he would see that as a misuse of power.
A letter sent by 23 trade associations and about 250 companies asks congressional leaders to renew the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program at least through Jan. 1, 2027, and to reform the competitive need limitations.
A bipartisan letter led by Ohio's two senators, and signed by 14 other senators across the ideological spectrum, asks Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to reclassify Russia as a non-market economy, which would affect how its goods are treated under antidumping laws. "In its 2002 decision classifying Russia as a market economy, the Department of Commerce noted that economic decentralization was the 'hallmark of market economies,'" the letter said. But, now the senators said, "According to Russian government sources, the state’s share in the Russian economy may be as high as 70 percent. This growth of economic intervention by the Russian government tracks the rapid expansion of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Russia. According to the International Monetary Fund, Russia has the third most SOEs per capita in the world." They also said that the ruble is not freely convertible, another one of the six criteria for determining if a country is a market economy.
The U.K. has removed tariffs on Ukrainian goods, and the EU is considering doing the same, including suspending antidumping and safeguard measures against Ukranian steel. The U.S. should follow suit, Mary Kate Carter, U.S. Chamber of Commerce coordinator for international policy, wrote May 2. Ukraine exported $1.9 billion in goods to the U.S. last year, and almost half was pig iron, which is already tariff-free. But sunflower oil, another major export from Ukraine to the U.S., does face duties. The U.S. is a small market for Ukraine, representing less than 3% of its exports, she said.
A third of the Democratic caucus in the Senate asked President Joe Biden to expedite an investigation into antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention by solar panel manufacturers in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, if they use Chinese components. The letter, made public on May 2, was led by Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who made the same arguments to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo when she appeared before the Commerce Committee (see 2204270041).
More than 200 companies, along with local and national trade groups are asking congressional leaders to make sure that the renewal of the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill reimburses importers for tariffs paid on MTB products back to Jan. 1, 2021.
The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, who will be one of the negotiators for the compromise China package, expressed pessimism that a version of the bill can be found that can get a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The Senate passed its version, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, with 67 votes; the House version, known as the Competes Act, only had one Republican on board.
Two Republicans and a Democrat introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would make all goods produced in either Latin America or the Caribbean duty free for 15 years, if that company was selected for a government-backed low-interest loan to move production from China to the new country. The bill, called the Western Hemisphere Nearshoring Act, was introduced April 26 by Reps. Mark Green, R-Tenn., Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-W.Va., and Albio Sires, D-N.J.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chairman of the board of Volkswagen to justify joint ventures with Chinese companies, arguing that they are involved in child forced labor in Congolese cobalt mines, and the destruction of rainforest habitat in Indonesia. He also referred to a two-year-old non-governmental organization's report that said Highbroad Advanced Material Co. accepts transferred Uyghur labor, and that the company sells to Volkswagen for its electronic displays, and said that the two companies that are now in joint ventures are also implicated in Uyghur forced labor. He said Huayou Cobalt and Tsingshan Holding Group "are implicated in grotesque human rights abuses." Rubio announced the letter on April 28 in a press release.