The Steel Manufacturers Association is asking President-elect Donald Trump to curtail current Section 232 quota restrictions and to end Section 232 exemptions for some Mexican products, to expand Section 232 to more downstream products, and greatly narrow exclusions to the tariffs.
Companies, labor unions and domestic producer coalitions that support antidumping and countervailing duties on Vietnamese exports all said Vietnam has not changed its practices enough to be considered a market economy in AD/CVD cases in the 21 years since the last evaluation of its status found it wasn't.
Canada and the U.S. issued statements about a panel decision on softwood lumber under NAFTA's AD/CVD dispute chapter, but the antidumping duty case, which was brought years ago under NAFTA, not under its successor, is not posted on the USMCA Secretariat's docket, and neither country would share the ruling.
Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, joined by 30 other trade groups, told the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees' leadership that they oppose the Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, which would rewrite antidumping and countervailing duty laws to favor domestic interests.
A bipartisan group of House members and Senators have reintroduced a wide-ranging bill to change antidumping and countervailing duty laws, after the bill failed to advance last year.
At a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing, Democrats talked up their legislative proposals -- two bipartisan, two not -- as answers to confronting China's trade agenda, and expressed skepticism of witnesses' advocacy for ending permanent normal trade relations with China, while some Republicans expressed interest in that approach, and one seemed cautious.
Dozens of firms, large and small -- along with trade groups from agriculture and manufacturing -- asked the U.S. Trade Representative to retain or even increase Section 301 tariffs on their competitors' exports. The companies that said the Section 301 tariffs are providing leverage and leveling the playing field included a number of politically important and large steel industry players, such as Nucor, U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs. Opponents argued in the same docket that the tariffs had not met their aim, were driving inflation, or having unintended consequences on manufacturers (see 2301180029).
Between increased enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and a proposed EU bill banning the sale of goods made with forced labor, Wiley lawyers predict supply chains will shift away from China and other forced labor hot spots.
Although utilities that are installing wind and solar operations and wind turbine manufacturers would like antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws to change to take public interest into account, panelists at Georgetown Law's International Trade Update acknowledged it will probably never happen.