The Democratic and Republican leadership in the House of Representatives selected members to serve on a massive conference committee with the goal of working out a compromise between the Senate and House visions for a China package. The trade titles of the two bills diverge significantly, and the members who will represent House points of view on trade are:
Congress passed a bill that will end permanent normal trade relations status for Russian and Belarusian goods, with a unanimous vote in the Senate and a 420-3 vote in the House. It also codified the already accomplished ban on Russian fossil fuels, unanimously in the Senate and 413-9 in the House.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce continues to argue against including rewrites to antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws, and calls for tariff relief, John Murphy, the lead advocate on trade for the group, blogged about their trade priorities.
A bill that would create an assistant secretary for trade and economic security in the Department of Homeland Security passed the House of Representatives on April 5 by a 348-74 vote.The bill also would establish an interagency council to identify concentrated risks for trade and economic security, meaning the condition of having "resilient domestic production capacity combined with reliable access to the global resources necessary to maintain an acceptable standard of living and protect core national values"
Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced a bill that would mandate country of origin labeling on beef only if it was born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S., the second-such bill Khanna has introduced during this Congress. Gooden said, “American cattle ranchers are being undercut by foreign competition because current labeling standards allow imported beef to be marked as made in the United States if it is only packaged here. Our trade policies should promote American-made beef and put the hard-working cattle ranchers in the United States first.” He announced the bill on March 30.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said it would be good if the House and Senate could name their respective conferees to the committee that will aim to hash out a compromise between the two chambers' China packages. He said the next two weeks, when Congress will not be in Washington, could be put to good use by the members. But Hoyer suggested the House will wait until the Senate passes its motion to go to conference, and gives its negotiating instructions.
After passing the House 424-8 more than two weeks ago, a bill to end permanent normal trade relations status with Russia and Belarus remains hung up in the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., objected to the language renewing Magnitsky sanctions that is attached to the bill (see 2203290057).
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, suggested that a provision in the Senate China package that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative must establish an exclusion process would garner bipartisan support across both chambers.
Importers are hoping that the guidance from the federal government on how to comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will help identify Chinese firms that are outside of Xinjiang but employ Uyghur or other minority Muslim workers through China's "poverty alleviation" programs. Goods from those factories will be presumed to be made with forced labor, but customs advisers from KPMG said identifying that nexus to forced labor in your supply chain is even more challenging than seeing if you have Xinjiang inputs several tiers down in your supply chain.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and three Republican senators introduced the China Trade Cheating Restitution Act to require CBP to pay interest on distributions of antidumping duties and countervailing duties to injured parties under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, which applies to entries made before Sept. 30, 2007. For imports that entered since FY 2008 began, injured parties have not been allowed to receive money collected on antidumping or countervailing duties. The Senate bill, introduced March 30, is a companion to one introduced in December in the House (see 2112140032).