A bill that would flip the burden of proof on forced labor to say that goods either made in Xinjiang or made by a company that accepts workers transferred from Xinjiang are made with forced labor unless proven otherwise has been attached to the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. That means the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is more likely to pass the Senate before the end of the year.
Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.
The office of Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., started sharing a discussion draft of the Customs Modernization Act with the goal of avoiding unintended consequences for businesses that provide services to importers or that import. It's a bill that would strengthen CBP's hand in numerous areas. "We were working with CBP on the legislation and, then, this is now sending it to industry experts," Cassidy spokesperson Ty Bofferding said. That input will help shape the final bill, he said, and described this as the middle of the process. He could not predict whether a bill would be introduced in 2022.
Ethiopia, the fifth-largest exporter of products covered by the African Growth and Opportunity Act, will be terminated from AGOA on Jan. 1, 2022, the administration announced, unless it takes "urgent action" to stop "gross violations" of human rights in the conflict in Northern Ethiopia.
Most Senate Judiciary Committee members from both parties said that two bills aimed at fighting the sale of counterfeits on e-commerce platforms are needed, though neither would be a silver bullet for a growing problem. The CEO of the Internet Association, one of the witnesses at the Nov. 2 hearing, also said his companies could support the INFORM Consumers Act, if it was more like the reworked version in the House, and they think the threshold for being considered a "high-volume seller" needs to be higher (see 2110280061).
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that the administration is "very supportive" of Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0, a bipartisan bill from Ohio's senators that would clarify how dumping calculations are made, would provide for expedited successive investigations when there is an import surge from a new country on a product subject to a trade remedy order, and would address extraterritorial subsidies (see 2104160037)
If the demand for steel spikes after the infrastructure investments get underway, there will be room in the tariff rate quota for growth, according to the agreement reached by U.S. and European negotiators. If there is a 6% increase in demand for steel compared with 2021, the TRQ on 54 steel products will increase by 3%. And if there is a 12% increase, it will increase by 6%. But changes smaller than that amount will not result in a change to the 3.3 million metric-ton quota. That quota, which will be administered quarterly, takes effect Jan. 1 (see 2111010029).
The U.S. will administer tariff rate quotas starting Jan. 1 on European steel across 54 product categories, with an annual 3.3 metric ton limit, but the products that are currently covered by Section 232 exclusions won't count against the quotas. Those exclusions will automatically renew through the end of 2023, the Commerce Department announced. For both steel and aluminum, derivative products will no longer be subject to tariffs or quotas.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative voiced support for the current CAFTA-DR rules of origin as the best way to support the textile industry in the Northern Triangle countries, following an Oct. 29 meeting with a domestic industry textiles group. Imports from Central American countries covered by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement have been flat since the agreement came into effect 15 years ago and some have talked about loosening restrictive textile rules of origin to boost production there.
Amazon announced that it supports a rewrite of the House bill that would require e-commerce platforms to verify the identity of some high-volume third-party sellers, and would also require some disclosure to consumers about those sellers.