After Free Trade Vote, Congress Moves To Mollify Domestic Manufacturers

Along with passing free trade legislation this summer, in the form of a grant to the President of “trade promotion authority,” Congress passed The American Trade Enforcement Effectiveness Act. By giving new powers to two agencies, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce, it establishes “significant new trade enforcement measures to protect U.S. manufacturing industries from allegedly unfairly-traded imports,” write attorneys from Sidley Austin. They look at what these agencies can and can’t do under the new law. One provision specifies additional criteria for determining whether a domestic industry is “materially” injured or threatened from an unfairly-traded import. The fact that an industry has been profitable, for example, won’t necessarily mean it hasn’t been materially injured.