China and the U.S. have agreed that China has until the end of the year to come into compliance with a World Trade Organization panel ruling on how it administers its tariff rate quotas for wheat, corn and rice. The WTO said that the fact that state-trading enterprises are given specific shares of the lower-duty import quotas, but that those enterprises don't always use all of the quotas nor is the unused portion reallocated to other buyers, means that China restrains the filling of its tariff rate quotas. The notice that the two countries agreed on a compliance timeline was circulated at the WTO on July 4.

Leaders of the generally pro-trade New Democrat Coalition warned the U.S. trade representative not to send an implementing bill for the new NAFTA to Congress on July 9. Rep. Derek Kilmer, chairman of the New Dems, and Rep. Gregory Meeks, co-chairman of the group's trade task force, spoke to reporters July 8 about why they sent a letter that day to USTR warning him off.

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.

NAFTA foe Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who is on the working group seeking changes to the NAFTA replacement, joined with the president of the AFL-CIO, the head of Global Trade Watch, and a handful of progressive House members to say that Americans are demanding that the biologics exclusivity period be dropped from the trade deal.

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said after a June 25 hearing on Mexican labor reform that the Democrats asking for changes to the NAFTA rewrite are asking for changes that are "relatively narrow." "Our hope is we can move with dispatch, get our concerns resolved, strengthen the agreement and move forward," he said, adding that trade deal votes "never get easy, putting them off."

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for June 17-21 in case they were missed.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who's been working for months on a compromise bill to address national security tariffs, said that an introduction won't happen until after the August recess. "We're trying to get a consensus on [Section] 232s, that isn't the easiest thing," he said. "But we're making some progress." He said, speaking to reporters on June 19, that he'd had meetings on the bill that day.

The day after President Donald Trump officially launched his re-election campaign, moderate Democrat Rep. Ron Kind warned the administration's top trade official that the China trade war is making voters in his home state of Wisconsin lose patience. Trump won Kind's district by 4 percentage points, and narrowly won Wisconsin in the Electoral College.

Most of the questions to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer about the Section 301 tariff actions focused on the pain to U.S. consumers and the difficulties faced by importers of products that are subject to 25 percent tariffs. But Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told the nation's top trade negotiator that even a local meat locker has been hurt by the trade war. Thune, who was questioning Lighthizer during his appearance June 18 in front of the Senate Finance Committee, said the meat locker employee told him that before the trade war began, someone would buy cow hides for $150 each. China imports a lot of animal skins to support its furniture and shoemaking industries. "Now I have to pay 600 a head to haul it away," Thune said the man told him, which is a cost of $40,000 a year. For a business that size, that could be the entire profit margin, Thune said.

Auto exporters will be “among the biggest beneficiaries” of a ratified U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said during a June 18 Senate Finance Committee hearing, adding that he has “hope” the U.S. will reach a trade deal with Japan within the next “few months.”