USMCA – Mexico/US Bilateral Talks

The United States Trade Representative Jamison Greer and Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard and their respective teams met in Washington D.C. on March 18 to kick off the first of many bilateral discussions between the US and Mexico ahead of the July 1 USMCA Joint Review.

“Technical teams were instructed to review specific options for increasing U.S. and Mexican production and manufacturing employment, while limiting non-market inputs into North American supply chains. During the technical discussions, the groups discussed gaps in key North American supply chains and policy options to address those gaps, including through increased cooperation on economic security, rules of origin, and complementary trade actions.”

“Ambassador Greer and Secretary Ebrard instructed the technical teams to establish a regular sequence of meetings to advance these discussions and identify key deliverables ahead of the July 1 Joint Review.”

Meetings between Canada and Mexico are scheduled for May, but no official meeting dates have been scheduled between Canada and the US.

 

Recent Section 301 Investigations

Excess Capacity and Production

On March 11, the United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer initiated an investigation pursuant to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

This investigation will focus on the “acts, policies, and practices of certain economies related to structural excess capacity and production in certain manufacturing sectors.”

According to the Federal Register Notice published on March 11, “Key trading partners have developed production capacity untethered from the incentives of domestic and global demand. This excess capacity leads to, among others, overproduction and large or persistent trade surpluses, as well as underutilized and unused capacity, in manufacturing sectors.” “This displaces existing U.S. domestic production or prevents investment and expansion in U.S. manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online”.

The following economies within scope of the investigation include:

• China
• The European Union
• Singapore
• Switzerland
• Norway
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Cambodia
• Thailand
• Korea
• Vietnam
• Taiwan
• Bangladesh
• Mexico
• Japan
• India

USTR will follow the statutory timeline to provide for public comments and hearings. They invite the public and interested groups and parties to submit comments and request to appear at the hearings.

• March 17, 2026 – Dockets will open for written submissions of comments.
• April 15, 2026 – End date USTR will accept comments and requests for hear appearances.
• May 5, 2026 – Public hearing before the Section 301 Committee.

Results of a Section 301 investigation can result in additional tariffs or other import restrictions, withdraw or suspension of trade agreement concessions, or enter into a binding agreement with the foreign government to either cease the conduct question or compensate the United States.

 

Forced Labor

On March 12, the United States Trade Representative initiated the second Section 301 investigation of 2026. This investigation revolves around various world economies “failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”

The US has had laws prohibiting the importation of goods farmed or produced by force labor for almost one hundred years. However, forced labor prevention has been at the forefront of US trade policy over the past 5 years with the passing of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFPLA) in 2021, prohibiting the importation of goods with related ties to forced labor forced on the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region of western China.

Building upon trade regulations and policy revolving around forced labor elsewhere in the world, the USTR is utilizing the more robust trade policy tool under Section 301 to investigate the use of forced labor elsewhere in the world.

USTR is targeting 60 economies (86 individual countries) across every region of the world for their potential failure to prohibit the importation of goods mined, farmed, manufacture or otherwise produced wholly or in part by forced labor.

Countries within scope are:

Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Australia; The Bahamas; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Brazil; Cambodia; Canada; Chile; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; Egypt; El Salvador; European Union; Guatemala; Guyana; Honduras; Hong Kong; China; India; Indonesia; Iraq; Israel; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kuwait; Libya; Malaysia; Mexico; Morocco; New Zealand; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Qatar; Russia; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; South Africa; South Korea; Sri Lanka; Switzerland; Taiwan; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; Türkiye; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom; Uruguay; Venezuela; and Vietnam

USTR will be accepting written public comments on the investigation up to April 15, 2026. A Section 301 Committee hearing for the public is scheduled for April 28, 2026, and post-hearing rebuttal comments will be accepted up to 7 days after the public hearing process has ended.

It is expected that these new investigations will be fast tracked within the USTR with the expectation to have Section 301 duties in place in or around the time frame for which the recently announced Section 122 duties are set to expire on July 24 this year.

 

CBP announces Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE)

In an effort for CBP to facilitate any future refund process with regards to IEEPA duties paid, CBP announced it has been working on an ACE function to do just that.

They call it the Consolidated Administration and processing of Entries or “CAPE”. This will be a web based, ACE function “serve as the entry point for importers and brokers to submit IEEPA refund requests (“CAPE Declaration”) to CBP.”

The process will be broken down into four components:

1. Claim Portal – Point where the importer submits required information identifying entries for which IEEPA duties were paid via .CSV files. CAPE will then validate those entries to check if it exists in ACE and there is at least 1 IEEPA duty line on the entry.
2. Mass Processing – This process automatically removed any IEEAP HTS code from the entry and re-runs duty calculations.
3. Review and Liquidation/Reliquidation – Entries will automatically be set to liquidate at a specific date. This provides time for CBP to manually review.
4. Refund – Process will consolidate refunds by liquidation/reliquidation date and IOR or a party the IOR has designated to receive refunds on its behalf. When completed, refunds will be sent electronically to designated bank accounts (ACH).

CBP stated this process will roll out in phases. Phase I will be the initial version of CAPE and will focus on IEEPA duties paid on formal and unformal entries. Later versions will address more complicated entries and scenarios, for example warehouse entries and entries with drawback claims.

CAPE is not yet operational and CBP will continue to provide updates on the status of the creation of CAPE.

There are things importers can do in the meantime, however.

1. Verify you have an ACE account, or, if you already have one, the log in is still valid. If not, contact CBP at ace.support@cbp.dhs.gov. It can take up to 4-6 weeks to get a new ACE account.
2. Sign up for CBP’s ACH refund process to ensure trouble-free refunds. As of February 6, 2026, CBP is exclusively providing duty refunds via their ACH refund process. No more paper checks.
3. Identify entries for which IEEPA duties were paid. Most notably formal and/or informal entries. Organize your entries from the simplest to more complex, such as warehouse entries or entries with drawback claimed.