Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who's also running for president, has asked an ethics official in the Commerce Department to examine whether the head of the International Trade Administration and the acting undersecretary for Industry and Security have ethical conflicts in the steel and aluminum Section 232 exclusion process. Both ITA and the Bureau of Industry and Security are responsible for evaluating the exclusion requests, and BIS officials ultimately grant or reject the requests.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer said he thinks the House could be able to have a vote in the fall on the new NAFTA. Blumenauer, from Oregon and one of nine House Democrats who are tasked with negotiating changes to the deal with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said he expects the group will meet with USTR "at least once a week." Speaking at a Washington International Trade Association event June 26, he joked that Lighthizer spends so much time meeting with House members and caucuses, "I think he travels the world just to get away from us." Lighthizer is on his way to Osaka, Japan, for the G-20 meeting. He met with the working group the afternoon before he left.
Mexico will be ready with a list of retaliatory tariffs should the U.S. end up imposing escalating tariffs announced by President Donald Trump at the end of May, Secretary of Economy Graciela Marquez Colin said in remarks to the Mexican Senate June 14. Work continues on the specifics of the list during the 45-day period Mexico has to reduce migration under the deal before the U.S. says it will again consider imposing tariffs (see 1906120039).
The New Democrats caucus, which includes the most pro-free-trade members in the party in the House of Representatives, has released a lengthy list of things they want to see in exchange for their votes for the new NAFTA ratification.
The Trump administration, furious that Central American migrant asylum seekers continue to stream to the U.S., says that unless Mexico can "dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens" coming to the U.S., it will levy tariffs on all Mexican imports, starting June 10. The tariff will begin at 5 percent, go to 10 percent on July 1, and then increase by 5 percent each month until it reaches 25 percent on Oct. 1.
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An agricultural exporter recently joined a Supreme Court challenge of the constitutionality of Section 232 duties on steel and aluminum imports. Basrai Farms says the brunt of retaliatory tariffs imposed worldwide in response to the U.S. tariffs has fallen on the agriculture industry, and that the Supreme Court should find Section 232 unconstitutional because President Donald Trump was required to consider these broader effects when imposing the tariffs.
Canada and Mexico each on May 20 ended their retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to the end of U.S. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum products from the two countries (see 1905170058). General safeguard duties set by each country remain in place but don’t affect U.S. exports.
U.S. exporters applauded the Trump administration's plans to roll back steel and aluminum tariffs and the decision by both Canada and Mexico to lift retaliatory tariffs.
President Donald Trump said May 17 said the U.S. has also reached an agreement with Mexico to drop U.S. Section 232 tariffs. The Mexican government issued a statement that said it would be lifting all its retaliatory tariffs in response. Mexico had targeted U.S. pork, dairy and metals. Mexican President Andres Lopez Obrador noted in the statement that this agreement will allow the countries to move forward with ratifying the new NAFTA, which is known in that country as the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada, or T-MEC, for the Spanish acronym. The Mexican statement did not say how quickly the tariffs and retaliatory tariffs would be lifted. A joint statement from Canada and the U.S. said tariffs would end under a similar agreement within 48 hours.