Conference Committee Opening Statements Alternate Between Hopeful and Combative

Members of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee who spoke at the first meeting of that conference committee to find a compromise China competition package sounded more combative than cooperative.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., the trade subcommittee chairman and the author of the House bill's trade title, said his legislation "confronts China head on and supports American workers and manufacturing, not just talking about it."

Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., said that the House bill "is a concession and a capitulation to China." She added, "I hope we start our discussions with the Senate trade title as our baseline."

Senators were mostly gentler, with Finance Committee ranking member Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, noting that the trade title he and the chairman worked out passed by a "nailbiting margin of 91-4." He added, "I’m hoping to add, modify and subtract from the Senate trade title," if those changes are supported by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, as well as the Senate Finance Committee chairman and the House Ways and Means chairman, and if the changes have broad support among the 107 members of the conference committee. "My goal is not to get out of conference with the bare minimum of support," he said.

The Senate trade title, but not the House title, directs the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to open a broad exclusion process for the tariffs on Chinese goods. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., sought to get support for that plank through a non-binding instruction to negotiators; 53 senators supported it, but not Crapo. Blumenauer pointed to that vote, saying it "suggests there's some flexibility with our Senate colleagues."

Brady said he will do his best to find common ground with Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., but also said that he opposes renewing trade adjustment assistance unless trade promotion authority also is passed. Several Democratic members of the committee who are also on the conference committee said including TAA is critical, since it expires in July.

Brady called Blumenauer's proposal to remove Chinese exports from de minimis eligibility a hasty change, and said that the $800 de minimis level is reasonable. "We should avoid stoking [President Joe] Biden’s inflation further, harming small businesses fighting to succeed in international commerce, or distracting U.S. Customs from deterrence of illegal trade in major shipments," he said. He called Blumenauer's proposed changes to the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill "extreme ideological proposals" and said the GSP changes would make it harder for developing countries to qualify for the benefit.

Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., the ranking Republican on the trade subcommittee, expressed skepticism but not outright rejection of the de minimis proposal, but panned the GSP and MTB changes. He said Congress needs to prioritize GSP and MTB renewal, and said, "I think it’s a mistake to narrow eligibility and add more red tape, especially in the middle of this supply chain crisis."

He added, "I appreciate the concerns about de minimis. I appreciate them enough that I would hope we could vet that … and as I hear from the front lines of our economy, we need to be very cautious as we move forward. I don’t want unintended consequences to be the result."

Blumenauer says removing finished products from MTB and removing China from de minimis are getting tough on China, as well as restoring the original legislative intent.

Ways and Means Chairman Neal said when he first came to Congress, formal conference committees like this one were common. He said they worked because members refrained "from saying things in public we would have difficulty walking back."

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, argued for his legislation that would make major changes to antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws, which he said would "finally begin to fix decades of mistakes." Brady said, as he has before, that he opposes that kind of change without more thorough vetting.