U.S. Chamber of Commerce

International Policy Update

December 3, 2021

Legislation Proposing Big Changes to AD/CVD Law Introduced in House

WTO Members Conclude Agreement on Services Domestic Regulation

U.S. Joins WTO Workstream on Women’s Economic Empowerment

U.S., EU, Japan Resume Push Against Non-Market Policies

Chamber CEO Comments on White House Supply Chain Meeting

GOP Ways & Means Members Introduce “Blueprint” for Indo-Pacific Trade

USTR Finalizes DST Deals with India and Turkey

ICYMI: Chamber Applauds Biden Administration’s Announcement of U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

ICYMI: Chamber Hosts U.S.-Colombia Business Summit

Commentary

Sen. Sanders’ Amendment Would Send Semiconductor Investment Overseas

Deeper trade ties will benefit both India and US

Legislation Proposing Big Changes to AD/CVD Law Introduced in House

At a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing on “Supporting U.S. Workers, Businesses, and the Environment in the Face of Unfair Chinese Trade Practices” on December 2, Representatives Terri Sewell (D-AL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) introduced a bill that would make significant changes to U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) law. The “Eliminating Global Market Distortions to Protect American Jobs Act” — also referred to as the “Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 Act” — is similar to the eponymous bill introduced in the Senate by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rob Portman (R-OH). U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai recently signaled the administration’s support for the legislation.

The day before the hearing, the Chamber sent a letter to the committee opposing the bill, noting it has “the potential to favor a handful of businesses at the expense of a much wider swath of industries employing many more American workers, thereby undermining the global competitiveness, productivity, and growth prospects of many U.S. firms in high-growth sectors.” The Chamber expressed concern the legislation would “fast-track AD/CVD investigations based on the findings of earlier, unrelated cases in a manner that could injure U.S. businesses that had nothing to do with the past cases in question.” It would also “change methodologies in ways that would increase tariffs and extend the reach of duties to goods from all producers in a given country in the event a single firm was found to engage in dumping or to receive countervailable subsidies.”

The Chamber’s letter also reiterated support for legislation to renew the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), enact a new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB), and “reinstate the administration’s largely moribund Section 301 tariff exclusion process.”

Those three elements were all included in the Trade Act of 2021, which the Senate approved by a 94-1 vote in May as an amendment to the “U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA).” In November, the House and Senate agreed to go to conference on USICA to reconcile differences between the Senate legislation and the House’s version of USICA.

During the trade subcommittee hearing, Chairman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) indicated he is open to including such trade provisions in the conference bill, though he added their inclusion would be contingent on strengthening labor and gender standards in GSP. The Chamber’s letter cautions against including overly burdensome requirements as lawmakers attempt to refine GSP’s eligibility criteria, warning that foreign governments might “conclude that GSP’s compliance burdens outweigh its economic benefits.”

Separately, the Chamber also joined the National Association of Manufacturers and more than 200 other business associations and companies in a letter urging passage of the MTB by the end of the year. The last MTB expired at the end of 2020.

For further information, please contact Director for International Policy Isabelle Icso (iicso@uschamber.com).

WTO Members Conclude Agreement on Services Domestic Regulation

On December 2, the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced the successful conclusion of negotiations on the text of the WTO Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on Services Domestic Regulation (SDR), despite the pandemic-related postponement of the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12). This plurilateral agreement among more than 60 WTO members and representing 90% of global services trade was expected as a deliverable for MC12 before its postponement this week. The text includes new disciplines in areas including licensing, qualifications assessments, transparency, and procedures for services suppliers. It also includes a voluntary set of alternative disciplines on financial services and an optional provision requiring non-discrimination between genders in authorization procedures for service suppliers.

The agreement received high praise not only for its provisions to facilitate services trade but also its significance as a successfully concluded agreement on services trade. Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement:

“This is the first set of rules on services in 24 years. It addresses a dynamic and fast-growing segment of global output… It will save businesses, especially small businesses, $150 billion annually in costs according to WTO and OECD research. It upgrades WTO rule making. It shows the WTO is up and moving!”

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai made the following statement:

“The United States has long championed transparency and fairness of regulatory rules as a fundamental feature of good governance, and the DR JSI is an opportunity to strengthen such standards around the globe. This initiative is the first successful WTO services negotiation in years, and shows how WTO Members can take practical, common sense steps to address clearly defined trade problems.”

The Chamber co-signed an August letter with the United States Council for International Business and the National Foreign Trade Council thanking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai for the U.S. decision to become a full participant in WTO negotiations on the JSI on SDR. The letter called the move “an important step in facilitating trade in the services sector which has been disproportionately encumbered by burdensome, unpredictable and opaque regulatory regimes” and urged the U.S. to “work with like-minded countries to engage other JSI participants to apply the proposed disciplines to services sectors where no specific commitments have yet been made.”

For further information, please contact Senior Vice President for International Policy John Murphy (jmurphy@uschamber.com).

U.S. Joins WTO Workstream on Women’s Economic Empowerment

Also on the WTO front, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced on December 2 that the United States intends to join the Joint Declaration on the Advancement of Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment Within Trade for the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference. In a press release, USTR stated:

“Today’s announcement reflects the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to building back better by advancing equity across the board and consistent with its national gender strategy to advance the full participation of all people — including women and girls — in the United States and around the world.

“USTR will continue to participate in the Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender at the WTO to deepen the understanding of structural and cultural barriers to women’s participation in trade in order to craft trade policy that promotes women’s economic empowerment.”

A number of Chamber member companies have engaged on these issues in recent years and contributed to this development. For further information, please contact Director for International Policy Isabelle Icso (iicso@uschamber.com).

U.S., EU, Japan Resume Push Against Non-Market Policies

On November 30, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hagiuda Koichi, and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis agreed to renew their trilateral partnership to address the global challenges posed by non-market policies and practices of third countries that undermine and negatively affect workers and businesses. This effort began in 2017 at the WTO’s 11th Ministerial Conference and resulted in a January 2020 agreement among the three countries on ways to strengthen existing WTO rules on industrial subsidies. In a joint statement, the ministers agreed to focus their resumed work in three areas:

The Chamber previously encouraged the trilateral partnership’s efforts to continue, as that work represents one example of a cooperative approach to key issues vis-à-vis China. As work continues in the multilateral context, the Chamber will urge like-minded governments to join in these efforts to remove China’s discriminatory policies and practices and adopt market-opening and market-based reforms.

For further information, please contact Senior Vice President for International Policy John Murphy (jmurphy@uschamber.com).

Chamber CEO Comments on White House Supply Chain Meeting

On November 29, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne Clark released the following statement after President Biden hosted CEOs from several major companies at the White House to discuss solutions to the supply chain crisis amid the start of the holiday shopping season.

“The U.S. Chamber appreciates the White House's engagement with several private sector CEOs to discuss their efforts to ensure that shelves will be fully stocked this holiday season. We would encourage the Administration to not lose sight of the longer term challenges facing the global supply chain that will require consistent, concerted, and ongoing collaboration among all participants, including government, unions, and the business community."

For further information, please contact Vice President for Supply Chain Policy John Drake (jdrake@uschamber.com).

GOP Ways & Means Members Introduce “Blueprint” for Indo-Pacific Trade

On December 1, Representatives Carol Miller (R-WV) and Darin LaHood (R-IL), both members of the Ways & Means Committee, introduced the “U.S. Trade Leadership in the Indo-Pacific and China Act,” which aims to promote U.S. trade leadership in the Indo-Pacific region by encouraging swift renewal of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and directing the Biden administration to modernize and negotiate new regional trade pacts.

Among other China-centric directives, the bill would require USTR to articulate a “long-term trade plan” with China as well as an extensive assessment of Section 301 tariffs in place. The legislation appears to be more “signal” than substance, with hopes that it will prod the administration to expedite its articulation and execution of a trade agenda for the Indo-Pacific.

For further information, please contact Director for International Policy Isabelle Icso (iicso@uschamber.com).

USTR Finalizes DST Deals with India and Turkey

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced last week it will terminate its final outstanding Section 301 investigations on India and Turkey after the Department of the Treasury struck deals with those countries regarding the treatment of Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) during the interim period prior to full implementation of Pillar 1 of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework’s agreement on a new multilateral tax regime. India and Turkey now join Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom in a framework that includes provisions that allow U.S. companies to credit their DST liability during the interim period to future taxes accrued under Pillar 1, implementation of which is at least two years away. In exchange, the U.S. terminated its tariff actions on those countries.

The Chamber has consistently pressed countries subject to Section 301 investigations in connection with their unilateral DSTs to immediately drop those discriminatory measures and focus their efforts on completing the multilateral negotiations.

In an October 6 letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, the Chamber emphasized that any agreement on a Two-Pillar solution to address international tax issues must be conditioned upon a complete withdrawal of unilateral measures such as the DSTs and encouraged Treasury to consider the inclusion of enforcement mechanisms that will ensure all unilateral measures are withdrawn and prevent new unilateral measures from being adopted.

For further information, please contact Senior Vice President for International Policy John Murphy (jmurphy@uschamber.com).

ICYMI: Chamber Applauds Biden Administration’s Announcement of U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

On November 20, Scott Eisner, President of the Chamber’s U.S.-Africa Business Center, released the following statement in response to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement that President Biden intends to convene a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit:

“We’re pleased to see the Biden Administration embrace the Chamber’s recommendations for a forward-leaning Africa policy by announcing the intention to convene the next U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. We hope this is the first step toward a more fulsome engagement with the continent that reinforces the priority the business community places on the strategic partnership with Africa, and the Chamber stands ready to be a leading partner. A strong business component should be key to the Summit agenda, because we know strong economies are the foundation of strong democracies. Be it through AGOA, advancing free trade talks with Kenya, or supporting the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement, our members see White House leadership as a vital component of a strong trade and investment relationship that delivers opportunity, economic growth, and job creation in both Africa and the United States.”

For further information, please contact President of the Chamber’s U.S. Africa Business Center Scott Eisner (seisner@uschamber.com).

ICYMI: Chamber Hosts U.S.-Colombia Business Summit

On November 17, the U.S. Chamber and the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI) met within the framework of the fifth annual U.S.-Colombia Business Summit to strengthen cooperation between the U.S. and Colombian private sectors, expand business and economic relations, and deepen engagement with both U.S. and Colombian governments.

The meeting was attended by President of Colombia Iván Duque Márquez and delegates from both governments who, together with business leaders, addressed issues of the greatest importance for the bilateral relationship, such as trade and investment and policy priorities relating to sustainability and climate, digital trade and infrastructure. With a view to 2022, when the two countries will celebrate 200 years of bilateral relations, the U.S.-Colombia Business Council is positioned as a strategic mechanism to maintain a dynamic public-private relationship that promotes sustained growth of mutual benefit. Click here for a readout of the meeting.

For further information, please contact Executive Director of the U.S.-Colombia Business Council Cesar Vence (cvence@uschamber.com).

Commentary

U.S. Chamber (December 1) by John Drake and Jordan Crenshaw

The Indian Express (November 23) by Nisha Biswal