House Majority Leader Expresses Doubts Forced Labor Bill Will Become Law in 2020
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that a bill that overwhelmingly passed the House last week that would change the presumption of guilt for goods coming from China's Xinjiang region may not get a vote in the Senate this year. “They haven't been moving much legislation,” he told International Trade Today during a phone call with reporters Sept. 30. “We'll see when we get to the lame duck, what the status of that is.”
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Hoyer said that if the Senate doesn't act, something like this bill (see 2009220038) could return in the next Congress. “We thought it was a high priority,” he said. “This problem is not going away, so we need to keep raising it.”
Hoyer said it would be better if the Senate would pass its own version of a forced labor bill, and the two bills could go to conference to work out a compromise. “We don't do that much anymore, which is a shame,” he said.