Recent U.S. trade actions, such as the IEEPA tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum derivatives, and the temporarily paused reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries worldwide, could cause global container volumes to slump by 1% in 2025, according to U.K-based maritime shipping advisory firm Drewry.
World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told former U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman that she had a meeting with USTR Jamieson Greer "yesterday that was a little bit comforting," but that the current 10% U.S. tariff on most countries, plus 25% tariffs on cars, steel and aluminum and some products from Canada and Mexico, and 145% tariffs on Chinese imports, if it lasts, will result in global merchandise trade falling by 0.2%. Before the actions, the WTO forecast a 2.7% growth in goods trade this year.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has released in the Federal Register its Section 301 determination on U.S. shipbuilding (see 2504180018), meaning that it has confirmed the timelines for when the U.S. government will collect fees on foreign-built vessels docking at U.S. ports. Fee collection will begin Oct. 14.
Several trade groups representing shippers, the maritime industry and U.S. ports criticized the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's Section 301 determination last week calling for a phased-in approach to levy fees on foreign-built vessels and car-carrying vessels docking at U.S. ports as part of a broader push to build and bolster an American shipbuilding industry (see 2504180018).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is planning a phased-in approach to assessing fees on foreign-built vessels calling at U.S. ports, according to an April 17 announcement unveiling the results of its year-long Section 301 investigation.
The European Commission has proposed 25% retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. goods in response to the tariffs on steel and aluminum President Donald Trump imposed last month (see 2503120042), according to a document seen by Reuters, the news service reported April 7.
The U.S. Trade Representative has published its annual trade estimate, almost 400 pages of tariff and non-tariff barriers in countries around the world. The report noted, "The estimates included in this report constitute an attempt to quantitatively assess the potential effect of removing certain foreign trade barriers to particular U.S. exports. However, the estimates cannot be used to determine the total effect on U.S. exports, either to the country in which a barrier has been identified, or to the world in general. In other words, the estimates contained in this report cannot be aggregated in order to derive a total estimate of gain in U.S. exports to a given country or the world."
Exporters who send their goods in ocean freight testified to an interagency panel that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's proposal to require a segment of exports to travel on U.S.-flagged, and eventually, U.S.-built ships (see 2502240058) will harm their business, or even make transport so expensive that they will be priced out of sales altogether.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with U.K. Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds and the British prime minister's Special Adviser on Business and Investment Varun Chandra on March 18 to discuss a potential bilateral trade deal, the Commerce Department announced. The meeting follows U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's visit to the White House last month. Lutnick expressed the Trump administration's desire for a trade deal, and Commerce said efforts to develop it "will continue to unfold over the coming days and weeks."
A State Department notice declaring that all agency efforts to control international trade now constitute a "foreign affairs function" of the U.S. under the Administrative Procedure Act will ultimately be subject to the discretion of the courts, trade lawyers told us.