WASHINGTON, D.C., (March 3, 2022) — Today, Americans for Free Trade (AFT), a broad coalition of American businesses, trade organizations, and workers united against tariffs sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy encouraging Congress to include language requiring the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to restart a comprehensive, transparent, and fair exclusions process for products subject to 301 tariffs.

“While we continue to call for an end to the additional tariffs on U.S. companies as well as China’s retaliatory tariffs, we believe reinstituting the section 301 exclusion process is critical to providing interim relief for U.S. businesses,” Americans for Free Trade wrote. “We welcomed USTR’s announcement in October to open an exclusions process for a limited set of products. However, that process is only available to approximately 1 percent of the original exclusion applications and USTR has yet to announce any new exclusions from the process. To provide meaningful relief, a more robust process is needed.”

178 trade associations signed on to the letter. The full text of the letter may be found here.