The House of Representatives will vote on an amendment that would require the Commerce Department to conduct "a comprehensive study on domestic tin plate steel production and the demand for steel food cans in the U.S. ahead of moving forward with proposed tin-plate steel tariffs."

As the negotiators push to get agreement on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in San Francisco, two Senate committee chairmen are arguing that the trade pillar should be jettisoned, or at least delayed until the administration can build support in Congress.

The Southern Shrimp Alliance hailed a recently introduced bipartisan bill that would require cargo imported by air or land to be covered by publicly accessible manifests, just as is cargo that comes over the oceans (see 2311030022).

Twenty of Florida's 28 representatives, led by Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republican Mario Díaz-Balart, are calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to reinstate the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, which expired almost three years ago.

The New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of pro-free trade Democrats, publicly released a letter to the president asking him to change course on trade, and work on traditional free trade agreements that lower tariffs and go through congressional approval. President Joe Biden has declined to work on any trade-liberalizing FTAs, saying that deals that can be negotiated more quickly that address supply chains, trade facilitation and other non-tariff barriers are more fit for today's challenges.

The chairman and top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China asked U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to consider launching a new Section 301 investigation for autos, in order to examine the harm that China's subsidization and technology transfer practices could do if Chinese electric vehicles start entering the U.S. in large numbers.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden and the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Mike Crapo, are asking CBP to explain how it uses AI in both trade enforcement and trade facilitation, with detailed questions on where it's used, how it's validated and whether the agency allows importers and exporters to challenge a decision that is based on AI.

House Select Committee on China Republicans wrote to President Joe Biden, asking him to make human rights and military demands of Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which will happen Nov. 15-17.

The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, at the end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act Forum, said improving AGOA should be of less importance than renewing the program ahead of September 2025. The program expires at the end of that month.

A recently introduced Senate bill that would impose an import pollution fee likely violates World Trade Organization rules, Simon Lester, former legal affairs officer at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat, said in a blog post.