The Senate Commerce Committee on July advanced a bill that would require sellers of new merchandise online to disclose "in a conspicuous manner" in its listing the product's country of origin.

Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., who is close with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is hoping a bill he leads that would prohibit the importation of seafood with any Russian content will pass this year.

The Senate recently passed a bill that would set up a pilot program for non-asset-based third-party logistics providers and warehouses to participate in the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program. The CTPAT Pilot Program Act of 2023 would require that CBP run the pilot program for 20 3PLs in total, of which 10 will be non-asset-based and 10 others will be entities that manage and execute logistics services with their “own warehousing assets and resources on behalf of its customers.” Both warehousing companies and non-asset-based 3PLs currently aren't allowed to join CTPAT.

House Select Committee on China Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said he wants U.S. companies that source from or have operations in China to "take off the golden blindfolds, and assess the risk." Gallagher and the committee's ranking member, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., were speaking at an event hosted by Punchbowl News on July 20.

The U.S. needs to better prepare for future Chinese retaliation against U.S. trade restrictions, said Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., which could further hurt U.S. imports of items needed for semiconductor production. Sherrill, speaking during a July 20 House Select Committee on China hearing, pointed to China’s recent export restrictions on germanium and gallium -- two metals used to produce semiconductors -- and said she expects more retaliation to come (see 2307060053 and 2307050018). “I think we're going to see more and more instances of China putting our supply chain at risk,” she said.

Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., have reintroduced a bill that would refund some tariffs paid to importers of goods that were hit with tariffs as a result of the Airbus dispute with the EU. The bill also would prohibit future actions by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that would hike tariffs on goods already in transit -- unless the tariffs were on a nonmarket economy, such as China. The bill would require USTR to set an effective date for the tariff hike no sooner than 60 days from the publication of the target list.

The New Democrat Coalition announced the release July 19 of a new economic plan that includes a "comprehensive, fair, and transparent exclusion process for existing Section 301 tariffs." The caucus' Economic Opportunity Agenda says the exclusion process will "cut costs for Americans and ease global supply chain constraints."

Members of the Select Committee on China led a letter from 66 House members to the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee, complaining that the expiration of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program has benefited China and led importers who had capitalized on GSP to return to China.

One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to enforce the ban on goods made with child labor, particularly cobalt and lithium.

House lawmakers proposed several trade-related amendments as part of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, including a Democrat-backed measure that could require publicly traded companies to annually disclose whether their imports originate in or are sourced in part from China’s Xinjiang region or from factories “implicated in forced labor schemes.”