A U.S. manufacturer and a labor union seek the imposition of new antidumping duties on tin mill products from Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.K., as well as new countervailing duties on tin mill products from China, they said in petitions filed with the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission Jan. 18. Commerce will now decide whether to begin AD/CVD investigations, which could result in the imposition of permanent AD/CVD orders and the assessment of AD and CVD on importers. Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers Union filed the petitions.
Section 232 Tariffs
The United States currently maintains a 25% tariff on steel imports and 10% on tariff on aluminum imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. In 2018, the Trump administration imposed Section 232 Tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the United States, citing national security concerns. The U.S. agreed to lift tariffs on Canada and Mexico after the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and reached deals with the European Union, Japan and other countries to replace the tariffs with quotas for steel and aluminum imports into the U.S.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 9-15:
Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., one of the leading voices for free trade in the Democratic caucus, and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a free-trade purist in the Republican caucus, issued a joint paper of recommendations on trade on Dec. 29, just before they were both leaving office.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who chose to retire from the Senate, warned that Section 232 tariffs -- and the economic costs they impose on downstream users of steel -- are "about to get much worse," because there was no interest in passing reforms to the statute.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, in a Q&A with members of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. needs the EU to succeed in developing its green transition technologies, just as the EU needs the U.S. to succeed in that arena.
Although some observers thought the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's reaction to losing cases filed by Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and China at the World Trade Organization over its steel and aluminum tariffs marked a new era of rejecting the rules-based trading system, others who had served either in the WTO or the U.S. government said there was nothing too surprising about the U.S. reaction to its loss.
In a briefing to members of the European Parliament, the European Commission's top trade official, Valdis Dombrovskis, said he expects the negotiations with the U.S. over the discriminatory aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act to partially, but not fully, resolve EU concerns.
The World Trade Organization issued a series of four rulings Dec. 9 finding that the U.S. Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs set by President Donald Trump violated global trade rules. In the landmark rulings, a three-person panel found that the duties violated Articles I, II, XI and XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The dispute panel said the tariffs, which the Trump administration said were needed to maintain U.S. national security, were not "taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations," as mandated by Article XXI(b)(iii) of national security protections, so the duties violate the GATT.
A report from Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress said that while the Federal Reserve is doing the right thing to drive down inflation, Congress should act to remove Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, and Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum. "These 2018-2020 era tariffs are currently in effect on $280 billion of U.S. imports, imposing a $50 billion annual cost burden on U.S. producers and consumers that use imported goods. Estimates suggest that removing recently imposed tariffs on imports from China, steel and aluminum imports, and Canadian lumber imports could deliver a one-time inflation reduction of 1.3 percentage point," the report said. There is no mechanism for Congress to roll back the softwood lumber duties, as they are antidumping and countervailing duties. However, the U.S. used to lower the trade remedies when the cost of lumber rose above certain thresholds.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Oct. 3-9 and Oct. 10-16: