President Trump’s on again, off again tariff mania is, well, choose your adjective. From one day to the next, imported products, be they pharmaceuticals, kitchen cabinets, lumber, or foreign movies, are being tariffed at massive rates. Brazilian products are facing 50 percent tariffs because Brazil isn’t treating recently convicted former Brazilian President, Bolsonaro, to the President’s liking, and other countries are now locked into a high tariff for the conceivable future. Cambodia, for example, is facing a permanent 19 percent tariff on selling products to the U.S. A good country-by-country list of tariffs now in place, scheduled, or threatened is available here.
What impacts are the imposed tariffs, the announced tariffs, and the potential tariffs having on importers? What legal liabilities are importers facing thanks to tariff uncertainty. Will Trump’s tariff policy, actual and potential, expand or undermine US manufacturing?
To address these questions, I invited one of our top trade specialists, attorney Irene Chen, to join me on Economics Matters -- the Podcast. Irene represents and counsels foreign producers and U.S. importers in international trade matters through her law firm, VCL Law, LLP. As her bio bio details, Irene has had extensive experience working for the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Get ready to learn the not so good, the bad, and the ugly about current tariff policy and how it is impacting real companies in real time.
Irene’s Bio
Prior to entering private practice, Ms. Irene H. Chen spent four years as an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel for Trade Enforcement and Compliance at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Ms. Chen’s work at the Commerce Department included advising the Import Administration division on its antidumping and countervailing duty investigations and reviews and customs protests. Ms. Chen also represented the United States in international trade litigation matters, including cases at the U.S. Court of International Trade, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the World Trade Organization. While at Commerce, Ms. Chen served as a legal advisor to the Customs Liaison unit of the Import Administrative, rendering legal advice on matters pertaining to Customs import rulings.
Prior to her work at the Department of Commerce, Ms. Chen served as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. International Trade Commission, where
she advised the Commission on matters pertaining to injury determinations in antidumping and countervailing duty investigations and represented the Commission
in arguing appeals before the U.S. Court of International Trade and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ms. Chen has also worked at the law firms of Baker Donelson, LP, in Tennessee and Ding & Ding, in Taipei, Taiwan.
Economic Matters - The podcast is hosted by Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University Economist, a NY Times Best Selling Author, President of maxifi.com, and Author of Money Magic.
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