Mara Lee

Two pro-trade Democrats, a Freedom Caucus member and a retiring moderate Republican have banded together to introduce a bill meant to curtail executive power on trade proceedings. The bill would create a process similar to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to nullify recently completed rulemakings, for trade measures. "It’s time that Congress steps up to the plate, and uses the powers granted by our Constitution to collaboratively shape U.S. trade policy,” lead sponsor Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., said in a statement announcing the bill's introduction May 10.

Congress needs to be notified by May 17 of a deal for updating NAFTA in order to vote in the lame duck session, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said during a speech at the Ripon Society. "As the author of [Trade Promotion Authority], I can tell you we have to have the paper -- not just an agreement. We have to have the paper from USTR by May 17 for us to vote on it this year, in December, in the lame duck," he said on May 9. Ryan also alluded to the U.S. position on Canadian dairy protections, and his desire that Investor-State Dispute Settlement be retained in NAFTA 2.0.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, referring to press reports that the European Union may accept quotas on steel exports, told Senate appropriators on May 10, "I think there's a reasonable chance we'll work something out," while testifying about his department's budget. Ross also suggested Canada and Mexico should not be subject to quotas. Ross is handling the EU tariff exemption, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is handling Mexico and Canada as part of the NAFTA renegotiation. Canada and Mexico import nearly as much steel from the U.S. as they sell here, Ross said. "We literally don't have enough aluminum production in our country without the support of Canada," Ross said. "They have not been dumping." He said that Canada's low cost of aluminum production is because of inexpensive energy inputs.

Echoing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that if a deal isn't reached in the next few weeks, NAFTA 2.0 won't be finished in 2018 -- but unlike the lead negotiator, Ross suggested there may be no revised agreement (see 1805010042). "If we don’t see progress soon, probably we won’t see it for quite a little while toward the end of the year, if at all," he said May 8 at an international conference.

CBP will launch a two-to-four-week pilot program of blockchain technology this fall related to NAFTA and Central America Free Trade Agreement certificate of origin processes, a CBP spokesman said. NAFTA and CAFTA origin procedures were chosen for the pilot because it's an instance where CBP needs to reach further back into the supply chain than just the exporter and can "message multiple partners via blockchain at the same time." It was also appealing because it has a small, defined scope with potential for reducing paper processes, he said.

Without calling out President Donald Trump by name, both Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Undersecretary of Agriculture for Trade Ted McKinney criticized his approach of describing trade with friends as them taking advantage of the U.S. and stealing its jobs and wealth (see 1803300013). Sasse, a longtime critic of Trump and ardent free-trader, said good neighbors see trade as positive. "If you understand trade is a win-win, you don't talk about it as a zero-sum game," he said. Washington is talking about trade deals as if they were real-estate transactions, which are zero-sum, while trade enriches both parties as they each produce more according to their comparative advantage, Sasse said. "NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for the U.S. and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Mexico and NAFTA has been overwhelmingly good for Canada," he told an international conference May 8.

Industry and government witnesses told Congress that using blockchain markers could help make shipping more efficient and make fraud more difficult. But the lack of an international standard so far makes implementing a system difficult, they told members conducting a joint hearing on the technology's use in international trade.

The process for importers to get product exclusions from Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum items is too slow, and too burdensome, according to 39 members of the House of Representatives, from both parties, who have suggestions for how to change it. Their letter, sent May 7 to the Department of Commerce, says that retroactive relief from tariffs should date back to the date of submission, not the date of posting, unless the submission was not initially complete. In that case, the lawmakers say, the refund should be from the date the submission was complete, rather than the date it was publicly posted.

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that his replies on how the department weighed the issues before recommending Section 232 tariffs were incomplete -- and said that if his next letter isn't an improvement, the committee may have to consider compelling his testimony. The letter, sent May 3, gave Ross two weeks to reply. "Clearly, these tariffs will have a much more far-reaching effect on downstream industries and consumer prices than explained in your response," Senators Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., wrote. They said Ross failed to provide detailed cost-benefit analyses on the tariffs' effects, or analyses of prior tariffs' effects on downstream industries or prices. They also said he declined to say how the agency is going to measure success of the tariffs.

American exporters are confronting new non-tariff barriers in China, even on products that were already targets of higher tariffs in retaliation for U.S. tariffs. For instance, China's customs officials decided that the China Certification and Inspection Corporation North America was not adequately enforcing its higher purity standards on scrap metal, and on May 3, said that CCIC cannot issue any certificates for the next month.