Section 232 Tariffs

The U.S. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum should be lifted as soon as possible, Mexico's Undersecretary for Foreign Trade Luz Maria de la Mora said on Feb. 15. "Mexico is not a national security threat to the United States," De la Mora said while speaking at a think tank. Mexico can cooperate with the U.S. in monitoring customs, avoiding transshipment and policing tariff evasion, "all the things that are concerns to the industry and are legitimate concerns," she said.

Sen. Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat who represents Montana and the owner of an 1,800-acre farm, told International Trade Today that he's interested in evaluating both recently introduced bills that would limit Section 232 authority. "The whole trade war stuff is killing us in Montana, just killing us," he said to International Trade Today. "Ag prices are in the tank, and it doesn't matter if you're talking pulse crops, grain, cattle, they're all in the tank." He added, "I'm still in the business. I was sitting last night figuring out what I'm gonna plant ... there isn't anything worth any money." He predicted that farm foreclosures will continue to rise "if we don't get this squared away."

The approach to a future bill that would give Congress the ability to intervene on Section 232 tariffs will depend on what version can get the broadest bipartisan support, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters Feb. 13. He said he doesn't have his mind made up on what has to be in the bill to constrain Section 232 actions. He said his staff is "moving very quickly" to put together a bill that "shows the appropriate respect to [Sen. Pat] Toomey and to [Sen. Rob] Portman," Republican committee members who have each authored bills that would constrain the president on the tariffs (see 1901310029 and 1902120033)

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that neither Mexican nor Canadian politicians will ratify the new NAFTA as long as those two countries are subject to U.S. Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs. Grassley, who was speaking to reporters on a conference call Feb. 12, has said in the past that Canadian and Mexican retaliatory tariffs reacting to those tariffs have to be lifted in order to get the new NAFTA through Congress (see 1901090041).

Senators across the political spectrum -- from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. -- see levying national security tariffs on imported automobiles as "a step too far," Ohio Republican Sen. Robert Portman said, and he believes his bill, S.B. 365 on Section 232 tariffs could pass Congress and avoid a presidential veto.

The Aluminum Association urged U.S. officials to sign a trade agreement with China and to hold the country accountable for its “unfair trading practices,” the association said in a Feb. 8 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The letter, signed by CEO Heidi Brock, said the U.S. aluminum industry has suffered from China’s “pervasive subsidies” to its own aluminum industry. In particular, she said, the Chinese government has boosted domestic aluminum production and created overcapacity. Mnuchin and Lighthizer were urged to come to a “government-to-government agreement” with China on that aluminum overcapacity that would give “long-term certainty to the industry.” She said: “These important negotiations could lead to policy changes that result in measurable and verifiable reductions in Chinese aluminum capacity in both the upstream and downstream segments of the value chain.”

Drawback filers may “effective immediately” submit claims for refunds on Section 301 or Section 201 duties, CBP said in a Feb. 8 CSMS message. Filers will no longer receive error messages related to unit of measure (UOM) mismatches that had been occurring “because the underlying import did not have a UOM associated to a Chapter 99” tariff number or because they had left the mandatory UOM field blank, CBP said.

Republican senators have been saying they don't know how the new NAFTA can be approved (see 1901310038) and the House Trade Subcommittee chairman tweeted that there's a lot of work needed before his committee would vote for it or it could pass the house. One observer said it would be a "lovely miracle" if the deal were ratified this year (see 1901290028).

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security seeks comments on its proposed information collection that is part of the procedure for submitting rebuttals and surrebuttals for requests for exclusion from the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, Commerce said in a Feb. 11 notice. In September, BIS produced an interim final rule that made changes to the process for submitting exclusion requests for the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs (see 1809060035). That rule lets BIS allow for a rebuttal period for responses to objections, as well as a surrebuttal period for objectors to respond to rebuttals. Now BIS is seeking comments on the information collection proposal that it will submit to the Office of Management and Budget for clearance. Comments are due March 13.

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security seeks comments on its proposed information collection that is part of the procedure for submitting objections to requested exclusions from the Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, Commerce said in a Feb. 7 notice. Last September, BIS produced an interim final rule that made changes to the process for requesting exclusions from Section 232 tariffs and quotas on steel and aluminum products (see 1809060035). BIS is now seeking comments and recommendations on the information collection proposal that it has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for clearance. Comments are due March 11.