Despite looming geopolitical and labor uncertainties, freight markets are appearing to hold steady, trade industry executives told International Trade Today. But President-elect Donald Trump's announcement this week of plans to levy a 25% tariff against Mexico and Canada and increase by 10% the tariffs on Chinese goods (see 2411260012) could propel the freight markets into a frenzy should importers try to rush to get cargo in before the tariffs are implemented.
Joanna Marsh
Joanna Marsh, Assistant Editor, International Trade Today, joined Warren Communications News in 2024 after covering the supply chain from the transportation angle for a decade. At ITT, she covers U.S. import compliance and import regulations related to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and partnering governing agencies. She has covered the U.S. and Canadian freight railroads for FreightWaves, and she has also written about maritime transport trends, climate change, and AI and machine learning trends for publications such as Railway Age, Transport Topics, Breakbulk Magazine and the Freight Business Journal of North America. She also worked the U.S. coal markets beat for Argus Media. Follow Joanna at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannafmarsh/
Customs brokers expressed concern about a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10% additional tariff on China that President-elect Donald Trump announced in a Nov. 25 Truth Social post, citing uncertainties about how U.S. importers would be able to afford bond stacking and if they would be liable financially for the imports, among other issues.
There are now 107 companies flagged by U.S. regulators for using forced labor or sourcing materials from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, with the inclusion of 29 more companies, DHS said.
The number of shipments stopped in October by CBP because of concerns over forced labor rose on a year-over-year and sequential basis, even though the value of those stopped shipments decreased over those same periods, according to CBP data.
The CEO of footwear company Steve Madden expects to reduce its imports from China and increase sourcing from other regions to hedge against proposed punitive tariffs on China by President-elect Donald Trump.
As Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, a short-term spike in import volumes at U.S. ports is inevitable, given the president-elect's strident stance on tariffs, some logistics experts say.
DHS has updated its Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List to include textile companies that allegedly use forced labor or source material from the Xinjiang autonomous region in China, and it removed one entity from one category of alleged violations and placed it in another category, according to a Federal Register notice.
The CBP has finally let customs brokers know how many continuing education (CE) credits they must earn and when they can start earning them so that they can maintain their broker licenses.
CBP recently held that a teleprompter base is properly classified as an article of aluminum rather than as a part of an electrical machine, upholding an August 2022 ruling after an importer requested reconsideration.
CBP will bolster a number of existing initiatives in the coming months aimed at preventing the import of products made with forced labor, said Katie Woodson, assistant director within the operations and forced labor divisions of CBP's Office of Trade, during a panel on forced labor at last week's Western Cargo Conference.