Contributor: Lewis Leibowitz

As the Oct. 31 deadline approaches to reach an agreement on steel matters, the US and EU are headed for an impasse.

The Biden administration issued three decisions last week that raise the question whether international trade will be harder or easier when it comes to infrastructure and commercial manufacturing in the US.

Steel trade continues to cause dissension among our friends, perhaps more so than our adversaries. The conflict between the US and EU is the most talked about, but it impacts others including Japan, Brazil and India.

Last week’s indictment of former president Donald Trump has ignited a blizzard of commentary. Not much of it has looked at the implications for the global trade order. Over the next year and a half, major trade and strategic initiatives will be negotiated with adversaries as well as allies: everything from the steel and aluminum negotiations with the EU to the war in Ukraine.

An unusual clash of powerful forces is in full swing over tin mill products. An antidumping petition was filed against eight countries in January of this year, while an anti-subsidy petition was filed against imports of tin mill products from China at the same time.

An unusual clash of powerful forces is in full swing over tin mill products. This flat-rolled steel product is used to make “tin cans” that hold a huge array of food products and other metal containers sold throughout the world. Tin mill products are generally made from cold-rolled steel that is coated with tin or […]

In 2021, the US and EU called a timeout on their disputes about the US “national security” steel and aluminum tariffs and the resulting retaliatory measures by the EU. The agreement back then rescinded the Section 232 tariffs and replaced them with a “tariff-rate quota” that allowed a measure of tariff-free trade. In exchange, the […]

In 2021, the US and EU called a timeout on their disputes about the US “national security” steel and aluminum tariffs and the resulting retaliatory measures by the EU.

Every day, it seems, the headlines point to a general decline in the global situation. The more one reads, the more it becomes clear that our major issues are all interconnected. Addressing one will necessarily impact the others, either worsening or bettering them. Immigration is a prime example of this phenomenon. The two parties, and […]

US-China relations have been in the news for at least the last five years. Cabinet officials are traveling to China, Chinese leaders are coming to the US, books are coming out and the European Union is dealing with the same quandary: should China be further isolated? Is the West too dependent on China? As I […]

Occasionally, a story jolts you awake. You realize how much things have changed—once, a pro-trade remark from a senior government official was routine. Now, it is remarkable. Last week the President’s Export Council (PEC), an advisory group currently chaired by Mark Ein of Kastle Systems, met for the first time since the Obama administration. The […]

A rare state visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India culminated in a joint statement by President Biden and the prime minister last Thursday. This was a blockbuster statement, covering 58 paragraphs and resolving or narrowing differences on a host of issues. Some disputes had been festering for years. Despite pre-meeting statements advising that […]

The Biden administration over the last few months has articulated the need for a new global economic order. But to date, there is little in the way of ideas for implanting that order. Mostly, Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative and Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, have spoken about what’s wrong with the economic […]

The US and European Union are working on an agreement dealing with carbon emissions in the steel industry. The impact on bilateral trade could be high. In 2021, the US and EU agreed that the US would suspend the 25% Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the EU would drop its World Trade […]

The debt ceiling deal passed by Congress has averted either an economic catastrophe or a minor headache, depending on who you talk to. It’s more likely that a pretty serious catastrophe was averted. But there was, in my view, never a serious chance that the US would default on its sovereign debt. More likely, some […]

Two separate developments suggest that the Biden administration may have concerns that more tariffs would damage the US economy by harming consumers.  First, we saw the president suspend action to impose additional tariffs on solar cells and modules from four countries in the face of an antidumping “circumvention” proceeding. Circumvention determines whether operations in third […]

Since 1997, the US Department of Commerce has had a regulation permitting an “expedited review” of subsidy determinations in countervailing duty investigations. The importers of subject merchandise in these cases are often denied individual subsidy rates because Commerce lacks the resources to investigate every company.  To compensate for the department’s insufficient resources, any company not […]

We have a few confrontations this week. President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy are scheduled to meet this week on resolving the debt ceiling confrontation. Some sort of compromise seems likely, but a cataclysm involving government default is hardly out of the question. The time for agreement is nigh—US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has moved […]

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently gave an important speech on the direction of trade policy. It was not his speech alone, but part of a coordinated roll-out of the Biden administration on trade policy, including contributions from President Biden, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. It’s worth looking at […]

The United States and European Union are quarrelling about several trade issues. None is more far-reaching than the trade impact of measures to address climate change.  While some still doubt the need or ability of the world’s nations to tax or subsidize their way out of human-caused global warming, governments, at least in Europe and […]

The World Trade Organization keeps on rolling along. Last week, the current director general (DG) of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, made a trip to the United States to attend the IMF annual meetings and to meet with international trade-oriented officials and business representatives.  Her itinerary included addressing the Washington international trade community, […]

We’ve reached a milestone on the trade litigation front. Nearly all the cases (save two) have been decided regarding the legality of Section 301 tariffs on China and of Section 232 tariffs (and other measures) on steel and aluminum. The US government has prevailed. The Supreme Court last week declined to review one of the […]

On March 17, the Court of International Trade, the federal court with jurisdiction over most cases involving international trade regulation, issued a major ruling giving control over China tariffs to the discretion of the US Trade Representative (USTR). The case dealt with legal challenges in nearly 4,000 separate cases to the  “List 3” and “List […]

The US International Trade Commission issued a report to Congress last week on the impact of the Section 232 import restrictions on steel and aluminum and the tariffs on imports from China under Section 301. The report catalogued significant injury to downstream industries. Namely, those that use steel or aluminum in manufacturing. The losses were […]

The White House recently released the president’s 2024 federal budget proposal. It is a huge document, proposing to spend nearly $7 trillion during the year beginning Oct. 1. That is a significant increase over the FY2023 budget approved by Congress. It even surpasses federal spending during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. For those oncerned […]

Mexico continues to have its problems with US relations. On March 3, former Attorney General William Barr penned a column in the Wall Street Journal about failures by Mexico to stem the drug cartels. Illegal drugs are flowing into the US over the apparently porous border. Barr recommends that the US take action reminiscent of […]

President Biden devoted a significant portion of his State of the Union address earlier this month on Buy American issues. As on most issues, “the devil is in the details,” but his general sentiment is clear. America, he believes, has sent jobs and wealth overseas by allowing Americans to buy imported products. This is a […]

Should there be limits on the power of the US Commerce Department under the antidumping laws to impose punitive and potentially prohibitive duties on imports? Last week, the Court of International Trade (CIT) placed some limits on Commerce to do so. The  CIT rejected punitive duties in an antidumping investigation of utility-scale (i.e., big) wind towers from […]

Depending on when you read this, you might know who won the Super Bowl, but we know who won this week—Joe Biden. President Biden gave an effective State of the Union on Tuesday.  The speech had everything his (and Bernie Sanders’) supporters could hope for: more Buy American, more equality, more populism, even more support […]

Now that the new year is one-twelfth over, the changes from last year are taking shape. In foreign policy and trade, a primary focus has changed from economics to geopolitics. Trade between the West and China, which has been the key metric for the last 20 years, has tapered off, although it remains strong. Trade […]