Commerce Department

China’s Ministry of Commerce this month found “non-market conditions” in the U.S. energy sector and hiked antidumping duties against U.S. propanol exports, a move trade lawyers believe could become a pattern in Chinese trade remedy investigations of U.S. exports.

Mobile crane imports primarily come from U.S. allies that do not pose national security threats, providing domestic consumers access to top-of-the-line infrastructure equipment, U.S. crane companies and foreign governments have told the Trump administration.

President Trump’s 2018 decision to expand national security-based tariffs on Turkish steel imports was “arbitrary and irrational,” the Court of International Trade ruled on Tuesday, marking the first time the administration’s Section 232 tariffs have been restricted by a federal court.

The Commerce Department will no longer issue export license exceptions for products headed to Hong Kong as the U.S. works to “eliminate differential treatment” that Hong Kong has long been afforded by the U.S., the agency announced on Monday.

Indefinitely postponing “is the best decision for the health, safety and welfare of the participants,” Commerce said.

The investigation is the seventh to be self-initiated by the department during the Trump administration.

The Commerce Department will conduct a Section 232 investigation into mobile crane imports -- the seventh time the tool has been used by the Trump administration to weigh national security-based trade restrictions.

The gap with China dropped again, from $19.7 billion to $15.5 billion.

The Trump administration’s handling of Chinese steel and aluminum overcapacity is not working, a group of Washington state Democrats told President Trump on Friday, urging him to improve a product-exclusion request process and ensure overcapacity is addressed in a phase-two trade deal with China.