On September 2, 2022, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) confirmed, as part of its statutory four-year review process under the Trade Act of 1974, that (1) domestic industry representatives benefiting from the tariff actions in the Section 301 investigation of China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation have requested continuation of the tariffs and (2) the tariffs will continue and may be subject to further modifications, including any modifications resulting from the review.
In the Federal Register notice, the USTR indicated that it received numerous requests to continue the July 6, 2018 (List 1) and August 23, 2018 (List 2) trade actions. To ensure comprehensive coverage in its review, the USTR also considered the List 3 and List 4A modifications as applicable to both the July 6, 2018 action and the August 23, 2018 action. For the July 6, 2018 action, requests were submitted by a range of domestic industries, including 244 requests from domestic producers and 44 requests from trade associations. For the August 23, 2018 action, requests were also submitted by a range of domestic industries, including 114 requests from domestic producers and 32 requests from trade associations.
With this determination, the USTR will continue its review of the July 6, 2018 and August 23, 2018 tariff actions and will soon publish a separate notice concerning this review process. The process will include a period for interested persons to submit further comments on, among other matters, the effectiveness of the actions in achieving the objectives of the investigation, other actions that could be taken, and the effects of such actions on the U.S. economy. For more details on the initiation of these reviews, see May 3, 2022 Update.