Ocean freight and rail freight likely will be returning to a pre-COVID pandemic normal by the end of 2023, a logistics executive said at a Feb. 23 conference.
An alliance of more than 25 GSP nations on Feb. 21 called on the U.S. Congress to renew the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program. The program authorization lapsed in December 2020 and has yet to be renewed. The Alliance of GSP Countries includes Pakistan, Egypt, Thailand and Argentina, among others.
The National Legal and Policy Center urged Apple shareholders to vote for a proposal appearing on their proxy ballots that would require Apple to file annual reports to the shareholders on the company's involvement with China. The recommendation came in a Proxy Memorandum sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 14.
CBP is unlikely to publicly list every entity that it determines engages in forced labor, said Ana Hinojosa, the former executive director of CBP's Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate. Although importers want CBP to provide them with a comprehensive list of potential companies not to work with, Hinojosa said it would be “an impossibility” based on how quickly companies change names after getting caught.
A bipartisan group of senators signed a Feb. 14 letter urging the Biden administration to take action against a surge of Mexican steel imports. The letter said tariffs can be reintroduced under a 2019 agreement that removed Section 232 duties on Mexican steel imports but allows them to be reintroduced if Mexican steel imports "exceed historic volumes of trade" and "surge meaningfully" into the market. The lawmakers said iron and steel imports increased about 73% over the agreed baseline from 2015 to 2017, which they believe requires action from the administration under the agreement.