The Biden administration is emphasizing the need to fight forced labor and exploitative labor conditions, as well as using trade to fight climate change, in the first Trade Agenda published since President Joe Biden took office.

Across dozens of pages of written answers to Senate Finance Committee members, U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai often avoided directly answering questions, instead pledging to work with senators on their priorities. One of the most common questions posed to Tai was whether she would renew Section 301 exclusions that expired last year; as well, whether she would allow companies that were denied exclusions another chance at a request; and whether she would reopen the exclusion process.

The issuance of CBP withhold release orders is not always seen as helpful in other parts of the federal government, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released on March 1. The full report includes some criticism from within the government as being too heavy-handed at times. “For example, although State [Department] officials considered WROs to be helpful in raising awareness of forced labor issues, State officials also said that the issuance of WROs can be a 'sledgehammer-type' approach that may make it more difficult for other agencies, such as State and [the Department of Labor], to implement more collaborative or remediation-focused approaches to eliminate and prevent forced labor,” it said.

The House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee chairman, along with two members of the former NAFTA working group, lent their voices to a letter asking the administration to drop its opposition to a TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property waiver, requested by India and South Africa, would temporarily end patent protections for new vaccines and diagnostic tests used against COVID-19. Countries are already allowed to do compulsory licenses in the case of emergencies, but only after negotiations on compensating the company for the right to manufacture the drug failed.

Mesh Wi-Fi network extenders perform a different function than routers or switches and should be classified in a separate subheading, CBP said in a recently released ruling dated Dec. 18, 2020. The ruling is the result of an application for further review of protest submitted by Calix over an entry of mesh network extenders, which was liquidated in subheading 8517.62.0020. The classification issue is “whether or not the protested merchandise is 'switching and routing apparatus' of subheading 8517.62.0020, [Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUSA)], or 'other' of subheading 8517.62.0090,” CBP said.

The maritime shipping industry is struggling to find a short-term solution to the unprecedented congestion occurring at U.S. ports, which continues to impose large costs on traders and further clog the global supply chain, industry representatives said. Although work is being done by the Federal Maritime Commission and Congress to provide relief, they said many of those efforts will do little to ease port issues in the near future.

U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai said that despite the president's prioritizing of the domestic economy, “I don't expect, if confirmed, to be put on the back burner at all.” Tai, a veteran of the House Ways and Means Committee trade staff, faced largely friendly questioning over a more-than-three-hour hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 25.

Thompson Hine trade attorney Dan Ujczo expects the only activity on trade in the first eight months of Joe Biden's presidency will be on issues either so small that they don't make a splash -- such as the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill and the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program -- or on issues that have an immediate need for action.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Feb. 16-19 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Senators from both parties asked deputy Treasury secretary nominee Wally Adeyemo about how the U.S. can negotiate with other countries on digital services taxes. There's a negotiation process in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and most countries with tax proposals are waiting to collect the tax to see if there can be a global solution. But during the last administration, the U.S. trade representative threatened to hike tariffs on imports from countries such as France to convince them not to levy these sorts of taxes.