Brady Says Congressional Action on Broad Exclusions for China Tariffs Possible

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, suggested that a provision in the Senate China package that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative must establish an exclusion process would garner bipartisan support across both chambers.

Brady, who was responding to a question from International Trade Today during an April 5 phone call with reporters, said the exclusion process that just issued decisions "addressed just a small fraction of the tariffs that land on American consumers, and clearly there’s bipartisan support for a process that recognizes the world has changed over the last two years, and those tariff amounts and which products they’re applied to need a real-time assessment."

He called for a "full, comprehensive and timely exclusion process."

However, the language in the China package gives USTR the power to ignore the requirement if it certifies to Ways and Means and to the Senate Finance Committee that an exclusion process "would impair the ability of the United States to maintain effective pressure to remove unreasonable or discriminatory practices."

If the process were expanded, however, the bill's language instructs USTR to consider the inflationary impact of the tariffs on "day-to-day items consumed by low- or middle-income families," whether the tariff has "an unreasonable impact on manufacturing output of the United States," and whether failure to grant an exclusion "would have an unreasonable impact on the ability of an entity to fulfill contracts or to build critical infrastructure."

The bill also puts deadlines in for decisions, and if USTR does not issue a decision within that time, the exclusion would be deemed granted until 30 days after the USTR publishes a decision not to grant the exclusion in the Federal Register.