Biden Administration Edging Closer To Decisions On China Tariffs

According to the Washington, D.C.-based newspaper Politico, President Joe Biden is considering a plan that could lift tariffs on $10 billion worth of Chinese goods and open a new exclusion process for firms to petition for additional relief. If enacted, this plan would cover just a small fraction of the duties that former President Donald Trump imposed on approximately $370 billion worth of imports from China.

At the same time, as Connecting the Dots has reported previously, the Biden administration is taking public comment on both the Section 301 tariffs and the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs that were put into place during the Trump administration.

Specifically, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has undertaken an investigation to determine the economic impact the Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs has had on U.S. industries. The commission’s goal is to provide detailed information on U.S. trade, production, and prices in the industries directly affected by these penalties. ITC will hold a public hearing regarding the investigation on July 21, 2022. Information on how to offer written submissions is here. Written submissions should be sent no later than 5:15 p.m. on August 24, 2022.

All written submissions, except for confidential business information, will be available for public inspection. All filings to appear at the hearing and written submissions must be made through the Commission’s Electronic Document Information System at https://edis.usitc.gov. Stakeholders with questions regarding electronic filing should contact EDIS3Help@USITC.gov or consult the Commission’s Handbook on Filing Procedures.

More information about how to participate is here.

The ITC will issue a public report after its investigation, which will provide:

• Background information on the Section 232 and 301 tariffs and an overview of the tariffs that were in effect as of March 15, 2022; and
• An economic analysis of the impact of these tariffs on U.S. trade, production, and prices in the industries most affected by these tariffs.

The USITC expects to submit its report to Congress by March 15, 2023.

As a reminder, MSCI consistently has argued that global overcapacity and other unfair trading practices, particularly by China, have harmed the U.S. steel and aluminum markets.

To address this circumvention, in 2017 MSCI advised federal officials to provide relief for producers up and down the supply chain and to consider the consequences of any new trade policy, including: the economic impact of global overcapacity on the entire domestic metals supply chain; transition times and implementation rules to any new policy; availability of domestic metals to meet U.S. national security needs, as well as general industrial and consumer demand; and trade flows under current free trade agreements, including the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA).

MSCI also asked that Canada and Mexico be excluded from any trade penalties. Click here to review all of MSCI’s advocacy on Section 232 tariffs.

Additionally, as Connecting the Dots also has reported, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is taking comments on whether to end Section 301 tariffs imposed on products from China. The notice launching the inquiry is here. Click here to review the products to which these penalties apply.

The process that USTR outlined includes different comment periods, comment period deadlines, and phases for the USTR to review and decide whether and which tariffs should be extended. The USTR already has collected industry comments on the first batch of Chinese industrial imports valued at $34 billion and will collect on a second batch covering $16 billion in imports from June 24 to August 22, 2022.