Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, when asked about the possibility of increased Canadian retaliatory tariffs (see 1903290047) during a conference call with reporters April 9, said he doesn't blame Canada for its coming decision. "Our president is at fault for not taking the tariffs off," he said. He quipped, "They shouldn't put them on any Iowa products because I'm one of their best friends in the United States Senate saying we ought to take those [metals] tariffs off." He said he has been telling the White House for four months that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico have to be lifted before implementing legislation for the new NAFTA arrives on the Hill (see 1902120032). "I don't intend to give up," he said.
Randy Howe, CBP executive director for operations in the Office of Field Operations, testified April 9 that a typical wait exactly a year ago at the El Paso Port of Entry in Texas was 15 minutes for cargo trucks. "Yesterday, wait times were as long as 250 minutes," he said -- more than four hours. "At the end of the day, 63 trucks were not processed."
House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., who voted against NAFTA the first time around, told U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer "this time needs to be different." Neal, who released a letter he sent to the USTR on April 9, said that persistently low wages in Mexico led to more U.S. manufacturing jobs being moved there, just as he'd seen factories close in New England in the 1970s and 1980s to move to lower wage states and countries.
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, who defeated a nine-term Republican incumbent last fall, is clear that NAFTA has benefited her district in the Houston area and the whole state of Texas. But Fletcher, who has been chosen as a co-chair of the trade task force in the New Democrats caucus, said she's not being urged by constituents to get NAFTA's replacement ratified as soon as possible.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has joined with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to propose that U.S. and Mexican officials inspect Mexican factories suspected of violating labor standards. Wyden's staff said that if that violation was verified, the U.S. would not give its products duty-free entry, and if there was forced labor, it could block imports from those factories entirely.
President Donald Trump denied he said Mexico has a year to improve drug interdiction (see 1904040030), but, for the second day in a row, he suggested Mexico is improving its control of migration, so he won't need to close the border soon. "I don't think we'll ever have to close the border because the penalty of tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Mexico at 25 percent will be massive," Trump told White House reporters a few hours after he made the one-year remark, on April 4.
President Donald Trump said he won't schedule a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping until the two sides have agreed on ways to resolve U.S. complaints about China's industrial policies and market access, but said they have already "agreed to far more than we have left to agree to."
More than 430 businesses and trade groups asked the leaders of the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over tariffs to ask the U.S. trade representative for a delay in his decision to bar India and Turkey from the Generalized System of Preferences program (see 1903040073). India accounted for more than $5 billion of the $21 billion in imports covered by GSP.
A bill that would provide $600 million for additional investigations into which Chinese companies are supplying fentanyl that is sold to drug dealers was introduced April 4, with the intention of holding China's feet to the fire in fulfilling its promise to crack down on fentanyl that is not intended for legitimate medical purposes. Three Republicans and four Democrats -- including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. -- introduced the Fentanyl Sanctions Act. The bill is also co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Bob Menendez, D-N.J.; and Pat Toomey, R-Pa.
A Texas Republican and a Michigan Democrat in the Senate are co-sponsoring a bill that would require CBP to hire at least 600 additional officers a year until its staffing needs are met. Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member of the committee that oversees CBP, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced Securing America's Ports of Entry Act of 2019 on April 3.