Although President Joe Biden criticized President Donald Trump's China tariffs on the campaign trail, Peterson Institute for International Economics Senior Fellow Chad Bown said he always thought it was unlikely Biden would roll any of them back, because there are "huge political costs" to doing so, because opponents could label you as "weak on China."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a July 19 opinion denied Hong Kong-based apparel company Changji Esquel Textile's (CJE) bid for a preliminary injunction against its placement on the Commerce Department's Entity List, calling it "a Hail Mary pass." Judges Judith Rogers, Patricia Millett and Gregory Katsas held that CJE's claims that human rights violations are not proper grounds to be placed on the Entity List are not likely to succeed, upholding the district court's ruling saying the same thing.
Just as the U.S. trade representative declined to continue work toward a traditional free trade agreement with the U.K. begun during the previous administration, current USTR Katherine Tai announced July 14 that trade talks with Kenya will deal with trade facilitation, digital trade, science-based sanitary and phytosanitary rules and rooting out forced labor in supply chains -- not reducing tariffs on either side.
In its recently issued Forced Labor Enforcement Strategy, DHS said CBP is making use of the Bureau of Industry and Security's export enforcement arm to identify Xinjiang entities that are involved in forced labor. CBP uses a “range of sources and research tools, both public and non-public,” to identify the entities, DHS said in its strategy document, including the interagency end-user review committee, which selects the parties that are added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List.
Trade ministers meeting at the World Trade Organization in Geneva agreed to a partial solution to harmful subsidies for fishing fleets, an intellectual property waiver for Covid vaccines, and to allow sale of commodities to the World Food Program even if the product is otherwise subject to export restrictions. The countries that attended the ministerial conference also agreed to extend the moratorium on tariffs on electronic transmissions.
CBP posted multiple documents ahead of the June 29 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting:
In a resolution meant to be part of the EU's new rules on products created or transported by forced labor, the European Parliament recommended banning such products from the bloc. According to the recommendations, authorities would "detain and seize" the goods at EU borders in instances where "sufficient evidence" indicates that they were made or transported by forced labor.
A top official in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that opposition to extending a moratorium on tariffs on sales of intangible goods has surfaced before, but that the e-commerce moratorium has been renewed at every World Trade Organization ministerial conference since 1998. "There are a few countries, despite benefiting from e-commerce and digital trade, who continue to resist an extension of the moratorium," she said, but most countries, including in the developing world, see the tariff-free status as important.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet remotely June 29, CBP said in a notice. Comments are due in writing by June 24.
A week before U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heads to Geneva for the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference, she said she's excited for what the meeting could bring, though she avoided predicting that either an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines would be approved, or that the 20-year fisheries negotiations would be closed.