2025-11-07
Our front page: Greer on the readiness to refund if IEEPA doesn’t pass muster
The top stories from the latest issue of Inside U.S. Trade.Greer: Administration ‘will be ready’ for tariff refunds if court rejects IEEPA regimes. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Fox Business that the administration ”will be ready” with tariff refund strategies should the Supreme Court rule out use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to support its tariff strategies. “In some situations,” he said, "specific plaintiffs will get a refund.” For the rest, “I’ll hand that file to the secretary of the Treasury. He’s the one that has all that money in the general treasury, and he’ll have all these importers and importing interests who are going to want that money back. We’ll have to figure out, probably with the court, what a schedule might look like, and what the rights are of these parties, and what rights the government has to that money.” Greer said he expects the administration to win its appeal of lower-court rejections despite tough challenges to its arguments during the Supreme Court’s oral argument session on Nov. 5.USTR delays USMCA review hearing following flood of appearance requests. The original schedule called for a Nov. 17 hearing to inform U.S. positions on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement review next year. The new schedule, following more than 170 requests to testify (and more than 1,500 written submissions, calls for three days of hearings, Dec. 3-5. In a separate action. USTR is seeking public comment on USCA labor issues ahead of a virtual public session scheduled for Dec. 10. The USMCA Labor Council, comprising officials from the three USMCA partners, will be meeting Dec. 9-10 in Ottawa. Labor advocates and supporters in Congress have been urging, in the context of the 2026 review, tougher standards and arguing that Mexico has failed to live up to its initial promises.Congressional Labor Caucus: Strengthen auto rules of origin in coming review. The Democratic caucus, in comments ahead of the upcoming USMCA review, is stressing what it considers a need for “stronger, more expansive and more effective” automotive rules of origin, asking USTR to consider “tools like quotas to safeguard minimum levels of domestic production” in the auto sector. The caucus rates USMCA as an improvement over the North American Free Trade Agreement that it displaced but say the USMCA’s rules of origin “was always intended to be a floor, and not a ceiling.” In its comments, the American Iron and Steel Institute urged the administration to press its USMCA partners to adopt “a special steel tariff regime equivalent to the current U.S. Section 232 national security steel tariffs.” AISI says neither Canada nor Mexico has “yet to take adequate actions to stem the surge of global steel overcapacity into their respective home markets and thus into the USMCA economic zone. As a result, imports take a much larger share of the steel market in Mexico and Canada than they do in the United States.”ACP, comprising nearly 80 countries, urges e-commerce moratorium renewal. The African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries is urging the World Trade Organization to renew the moratorium on electronic-commerce duties, proposing in a draft ministerial declaration that it be extended at next year’s ministerial (March 26-29 in Yaoundé, Cameroon) and, renewing previously articulated support for technical and financial analysis and work with other international groups on outstanding issues. The proposal mirrors a previous effort by the group of nearly 80 countries, a mix of developed and developing nations, on an issue that regularly comes up at ministerials. While the moratorium has been in effect since 1998, debate over issue has grown as e-commerce has grown.