Grassley Says Section 232 Reform May Have to Wait Until 2020
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said a bill reforming Section 232 won't be introduced in his committee until after the Senate votes on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, because, he said, that vote is a political complication for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Grassley, who was responding to a question from International Trade Today Nov. 12, said he doesn't think Wyden has a problem with the NAFTA rewrite, but that "it's a problem for Democrats generally, and I think he's got that to work with, and needs more time on 232. And I’m willing to give him more time, because I don’t see how I can move productively ahead without his cooperation."
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Once Grassley and Wyden reach a compromise -- and Grassley said he expects it to leave the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum in place -- other members of the committee would have the opportunity to offer amendments that could shape the bill. Committee members Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., have introduced bills that take different approaches to giving Congress more say about tariffs levied under the guise of national security.
Grassley expressed confidence about the timing of a USMCA vote, noting that once the bill is in the House, it can pass within a day there, and the Senate needs 10 hours of debate before it can be passed there. If ratification in both chambers "is getting close to Christmas," he said, there won't be any action on Section 232 this year. But, he said, if USMCA were to pass this week, "then I think we’d have an opportunity to deal with 232 yet this year. Maybe not to get it out of committee," he said, but to reach that bipartisan compromise on what the bill would look like. Given there has been no announcement from the House working group, the likelihood that a draft implementing bill would be introduced Nov. 13, and that markups and a vote would happen in the following two days, is not at all likely.