International Trade in a New Era: How Companies Are Navigating the Trump Trade Agenda

Chicago associate Nicolas Guzman spoke on a panel, which included Fortune Brands Home & Security’s VP and associate general counsel Leigh Avsec and Omron Management Center of America’s corporate and import/export counsel Mollie Sitkowski, on “International Trade in a New Era: How Companies Are Navigating the Trump Trade Agenda” on May 16, 2019, in Chicago as part of Drinker Biddle’s 2nd Annual Diversity and Inclusion CLE Event.

The panel covered the major developments in the Trump trade agenda, including:

• Withdrawal from multilateral free-trade agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
• Starting new bilateral trade discussions with the EU, India, Japan, the Philippines and Kenya
• The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) • Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, and ongoing investigations
• Section 301 tariffs on Chinese-origin imports, and ongoing investigations
• Mitigation strategies, including: product exclusions, tariff classification and engineering review, origin determination, valuation strategies and continued evaluation of alternative manufacturing locations