International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Just three weeks before the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will go into effect, many important questions remain unanswered, said Richard Mojica, a former CBP headquarters attorney now with Miller & Chevalier.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will extend the exclusions from Section 301 China tariffs on goods used to treat COVID-19 for another six months, it said in a notice posted on the agency's website. The exclusions were set to expire May 31 (see 2111100037), but USTR said it will extend the 81 product exclusions through Nov. 30.
A group of lawmakers is calling the outcry around the anticircumvention case on solar panels made in Southeast Asia "an attempt to undermine the integrity of our trade enforcement laws and the independence of our federal workforce."
As companies work to move assembly out of China so that the goods they export to the U.S. won't be hit with Section 301 tariffs, they have to grapple with the fact that CBP may still consider a good made in Mexico, Malaysia, Vietnam or elsewhere to be a product of China if enough of its innards were made in China.
Six Republican and three Democratic senators are urging President Joe Biden "to substantially maintain the tariffs in their current form," though they also said in a letter that exclusions are necessary for importers who cannot buy from elsewhere, but said Biden shouldn't lift or reduce tariff rates, because that would reduce U.S. leverage to address Chinese economic abuses.
Greta Peisch, general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said that the USTR will spell out in an upcoming Federal Register notice what opponents to Section 301 tariffs should address as they critique the effectiveness of the tariffs on the vast majority of imports from China, and what information the office would find useful as they undertake the review of the tariffs.
Although utilities that are installing wind and solar operations and wind turbine manufacturers would like antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws to change to take public interest into account, panelists at Georgetown Law's International Trade Update acknowledged it will probably never happen.
Some circumstances allow for post-importation price adjustments when determining transaction value, CBP headquarters said in a March 18 ruling, released May 23. The HQ ruling was sent to CBP's Automotive and Aerospace Center of Excellence and Expertise in response to a May 29, 2019, application for further review by an unnamed automotive importer. The importer buys motor vehicles and spare parts from its related parent company and resells them to authorized dealers and other related parties in the U.S.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.