USTR

“The kind of people who don’t know very much about what’s going on [should] sit down and loosen their belt and their tie and breathe 10 times and then just read something about it and then they’ll realize how they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The U.S. is considering quotas for Canada and Mexico to replace Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, the president said on Monday, while U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said there was no deadline for resolving the tariffs -- although it was a “high priority.”

Canada has agreed to eliminate its Class 7 dairy pricing scheme as part of the “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” – the new moniker for the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement – and has reached an “accommodation” with the Trump administration on autos in case the U.S. imposes Section 232 tariffs on auto imports, Trump administration officials said late on Sunday night.

In a meeting with USTR Robert Lighthizer on Thursday, several Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee said they hoped the U.S. would hold Mexico accountable on labor standards in the new U.S.-Mexico trade deal.

The U.S. told fellow World Trade Organization member countries this week that its $12 billion trade aid package for farmers was a one-time expenditure that would not put the country over its WTO agriculture support limits, according to a Geneva trade official.

Sen. Roberts: “At a time when rural America is in a rough patch with low prices and uncertain trade markets, this announcement is positive news.”

Turkey on Wednesday claimed the U.S. would be in violation of World Trade Organization rules if it decided to strip Ankara of benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences.

The U.S. and Japan have agreed to begin negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement, the two countries announced in a joint statement on Wednesday.