Free Trade Agreements (FTA)

On December 2, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an order preventing certain imported cotton products from China from being released to the importer. The products were made by Xinjian Production and Construction Corp. (XPCC). The order is based on information that indicates the use of forced labor in the production of the goods.
Continue Reading Cotton a Jam: CBP Withholds Cotton Product Shipments Under Forced Labor Rules

A tripartite agreement to save the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has just been reached. Since June 2017, the United States, Canada, and Mexico have been renegotiating NAFTA. After over a year of negotiations, late on Sunday night, September 30, 2018, Canada agreed to sign the revised agreement. That agreement is called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.
Continue Reading The New NAFTA: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)

This article suggests steps you should take to survive the current trade war. We are now in a trade war regardless of the fact that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would rather we call it “a situation of trade disputes.” Trade disputes are what we had from approximately 1945 to 2017: a relatively stable world trading order in which differences over unfair trade practices were mostly worked out under existing remedies, such as the antidumping and countervailing duties regimes. What we have now is a period of escalating tit-for-tat tariff increases in which the old trading norms are being increasingly rejected, exempted, and undermined. And it is those very norms that kept us out of trade wars for the last 70 years.
Continue Reading Of Course You Know, This Means War: A Strategic Update on the Trump Trade War

We’ll give him this: President Trump has an ambitious trade agenda. This fire has many irons in it, and some of them are getting hot. Here at the Global Trade Law Blog, we’ve been following trade law for approximately 250 years and we’ve never seen anything like it in breadth or scale. The administration asks us to trust that there is a disruptive and innovative grand strategy behind it, but to some of us it looks (particularly in comparison to a mostly orderly international trading system in place since 1945) like madness. The question of whether “yet there is method in’t” may only be answered by future historians. For the time being, herewith is our snapshot of the Trump trade agenda, late June 2018 edition.
Continue Reading 5 Weird Things About the Trump Trade Agenda: Disruptive Innovation On a Global Scale

On April 3, 2018, President Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative released a list of 1300 categories of Chinese goods that will be subject to 25% tariffs. That followed a tit-for-tat exchange in which President Trump announced a round of steel and aluminum tariffs on March 8, and China announced tariffs on U.S. imports worth around $3 billion on April 2 (including American pork, fruit, wine and steel pipes). On April 5, China responded with a list of $50 billion of U.S. goods that will be subject to increased tariffs (including aircraft, automobiles, and soybeans). That same day, Mr. Trump announced that he is looking for $100 billion additional Chinese goods to tax.
Continue Reading Five Things You Must Know About Trade Wars

On Monday, August 14, President Trump signed an executive memorandum directing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to consider a “Section 301” investigation against China. Now, many of us have heard the phrase Section 301 investigation and, as we do when we are at a party where everyone is talking about that movie we haven’t seen, many of us just nod along. For those of our readers putting on the brave smile, we present bit of background here on the following:

  • What Section 301 is;
  • How an investigations and further trade actions may proceed; and
  • What businesses should be most concerned.

Continue Reading Section 301: The Trade Law You May Not Know Well that Could Shock Industries

On June 19, Commerce Secretary Ross mentioned at a Wall Street Journal CFO dinner that the Administration is now considering launching an investigation of semiconductor imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Ross said the specific concern is the threat of China to surpass U.S. semiconductor production.
Continue Reading Dinner Table Conversation: How an Offhand Comment May Signal a Shift in the Global Trade of Semiconductors

Boy, does it sound convincing when Mr. Trump states he will submit notice under section 2205 of NAFTA to let Mexico and Canada know that the U.S. will withdraw from NAFTA. The problem is, while the president-to-be is capable, we presume, of writing, signing, and sending (or possibly tweeting) such a notification, that notification would not have a legal significance because withdrawing from NAFTA, ab initio, is not a power accorded the President.
Continue Reading The Undoing Project – Why NAFTA Can’t be Undone, but Can be Re-Done

By Scott Maberry and Lisa Mays of Sheppard Mullin; and Vincent J. DeRose, Jennifer Radford, Greg Tereposky and Daniel Hohnstein of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. Today’s Global Trade Law Blog is brought to you by a collaboration between the international trade group at Sheppard Mullin and the team at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG).

The United States and Canada enjoy a unique bilateral relationship. That relationship reflects a unique friendship, underpinned by shared geography, similar values, common interests, deep connections and powerful, multi-layered economic ties. The United States and Canada have both repeatedly confirmed their common commitment to strengthening the security of the border by working cooperatively to address threats early, facilitate trade, promote economic growth and jobs, integrate cross-border law enforcement, and bolster critical infrastructure and cyber-security.Continue Reading The Future of the U.S.-Canada Trade Relationship in Light of the Election

The Open Road: Approaching the TPP

Summarizing the behemoth 12-nation TPP agreement in a few-hundred word blog is a task beyond the reach of a practicing attorney . . . assuming he wants to continue practicing. In this article we will examine automobiles, an area of particular interest to two big economies in the TPP, the United States and Japan.
Continue Reading The Trans Pacific Partnership and the Auto Industry: Will Six Thousand Pages Pave the Way for Increased Exports?