Iowa Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are asking the Biden administration to complete free trade agreements in Asia, or rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as China expands its influence through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). They wrote Jan. 25: "Initially, your administration stated they were content with focusing on your domestic agenda before they consider negotiating new free trade agreements. However, a year later, it is clear that your domestic agenda has been stalled while China is taking serious action to expand their foothold in the region."
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, recently introduced the Sanctions Targeting Aggressors of Neighboring Democracies (STAND) with Taiwan Act of 2022, a bill that he says "would impose crippling, comprehensive economic and financial sanctions on China in the event that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or its proxies initiate a military invasion of the island democracy of Taiwan." Sullivan said the bill would prohibit hedge funds, venture capital firms and private equity firms from investing in any Chinese company in a Made in China 2025 priority sector and would sanction Chinese financial institutions and industrial sectors. It also would ban the importation of a good "mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in the People’s Republic of China, or by a person working for or affiliated with an entity or industry wholly financed by the Chinese Communist Party or in which the Chinese Communist Party has a majority ownership interest," unless the president said the importation is necessary for the nation's economic security, national security or public health.
All 14 of the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are telling colleagues in their chamber that providing a $12,500 incentive to purchase union-made, U.S.-assembled electric vehicles will spur foreign retaliation against American auto exports. The House version of Build Back Better offers a $7,500 refundable tax credit for any electric vehicle purchase -- the same amount as current law, but makes it refundable and does not phase it out for leading manufacturers. Currently, Tesla and General Motors vehicles are no longer eligible for the credits. But in order to receive $12,500, the car or truck would need to include a U.S.-assembled battery and be made by union workers in the United States.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission used to hear critiques that it was too negative about China, too focused on threats from what is now the world's second-largest economy. "There were a lot of people who thought we were outliers," said Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew, who once served as Rep. Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff, before the California Democrat became speaker of the House. "We are not outliers anymore. And that’s not because the commission’s views have changed. The entire debate has shifted."
The Coalition for a Prosperous America is asking the House Ways and Means Committee to move Democratic bills to curtail the use of de minimis and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill and to pass the Democratic version of a Generalized System of Preferences benefits program bill. Whatever the committee recommends will be subject to a cross-Capitol compromise, as part of a larger China package called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. The Senate’s Trade Act of 2021, part of that package, also included requirements to reopen a broad exclusion process for Section 301 tariffs on China.
Six Democratic and two Republican senators are asking President Joe Biden to overrule the International Trade Commission and allow the safeguard tariffs on solar panels and cells to lapse in February, as they were originally scheduled to do. Three Republican and two Democratic senators are asking the president to retain the tariffs for another four years, and to restore tariffs on bifacial solar panels, which were collected for about a year, until the Court of International Trade said applying tariffs to bifacial solar panels after they were originally excluded was unlawful. That decision, from November (see 2111160032), is being appealed.
Almost a third of House members are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to reopen exclusion applications to all importers of Chinese goods subject to Section 301 tariffs. Roughly $250 billion worth of Chinese imports annually are subject to an additional 25% tariff under Section 301; another $112 billion worth of imports are subject to an additional 7.5% tariff.
The Senate Banking Committee Jan. 19 approved the nominations of four Export-Import Bank officials and one official with the Commerce Department’s Foreign Commercial Service. The committee advanced all five for consideration before the full Senate: Reta Jo Lewis, for president of Ex-Im; Judith Pryor, for first vice president of Ex-Im; Owen Herrnstadt, for member of Ex-Im’s board of directors; Parisa Salehi, for Ex-Im inspector general; and Arun Venkataraman, for assistant secretary of Commerce and director general of the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the International Trade Commission to analyze the results of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, including which participating countries export the most, both commodities and value-added products, and identifying tariff-eligible products where the preference was not claimed, as well as imports of products not covered by the program. Neal asked the ITC to identify countries and sectors that are heavy users of AGOA, and that do not use AGOA much "and broad factors that explain this."
Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., cosponsored a bill that would ban the import and export of bear viscera, a bill designed to discourage bear poaching in order to harvest bear bile, used in traditional Chinese medicines. The bill, introduced Jan. 11, says that while the black bear population in the U.S. is stable, government officials have found that U.S. bears have been poached for their gallbladders.