Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) yesterday urged Commere Secretary Gina Raimondo to continue guarding against political and foreign interference in the trade enforcement process.
He also called on Commerce to ensure US workers and companies can compete on a level playing field and to address unfair and illegal trade practices.
The senator’s letter to Secretary Raimondo follows on an earlier, bipartisan letter sent in February, which urged Commerce to investigate the antidumping and countervailing duty petitions filed by Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers on imports of tin and chromium coated sheet steel products.
Commerce has initiated the investigations, but Sen. Brown expressed concern that the cases are receiving “politicized media attention,” along with a circumvention case dealing with solar panels.
“American companies and workers deserve the certainty that the nation’s trade remedy laws are behind them, that these laws will be applied equitably, consistently, and fairly, and the knowledge that no nation or industry is above the law,” Sen. Brown wrote in a letter to Secretary Raimondo.
“To that end, I urge you to guard against politicized interference by upholding all recommendations in the tin plate case, making certain the wafer certification provisions do not create a backdoor for Chinese-made products to access American tax credits, and continuing to emphasize objectiveness in all current and future determinations.”
Sen. Brown also called on Commerce not to allow exclusions “that could be utilized as a backdoor for solar panels made with Chinese-made wafers to receive a tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act.”
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