A new House bill could allow the Federal Maritime Commission to block certain “anticompetitive” agreements between ocean carriers and marine terminal operators without first having to secure a federal court order. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., introduced the bill, called the Ocean Shipping Competition Enforcement Act, after FMC Commissioners Max Vekich and Carl Bentzel asked him to “make this critical change in federal law,” Garamendi said.
The National Taxpayers Union, a group that advocates for lower taxes, is urging members of the House of Representatives to vote against a resolution that would overturn the administration's decision to delay antidumping and countervailing duties on solar panels from Southeast Asia that the Commerce Department says circumvent an earlier order against Chinese panels.
A request to fund at least 600 additional CBP officers and staff at the Office of Field Operations is at the heart of a letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America; 11 other national travel, cargo or ports trade groups; and a host of local and regional trade groups. The letter, sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, said wait times for both travelers and cargo at ports of entry are growing, especially as CBP officers from air, sea and northern border ports are being assigned to 60-day stints along the Southwest border to process migrants walking into the U.S. from Mexico.
A letter signed by all the freshmen Democrats in the House of Representatives lauds President Joe Biden's new stance on trade.
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., is questioning why Chinese intellectual property and components used in U.S. assembly plants for electric vehicle batteries and solar panels should be eligible for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Reps. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., are co-sponsoring Fighting Trade Cheats Act, a companion to a bill introduced in the Senate in March (see 2303160067).
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., recently authored an opinion piece in The Washington Times calling for a "foreign pollution fee" to combat Chinese emissions. The fee would target imports, "like Chinese steel and chemicals, produced with lower environmental standards than cleaner American production," he said.
Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., has reintroduced a bill that would ban the importation of fresh citrus from China, beginning 90 days after passage. Text of the U.S. Citrus Protection Act was published April 18. It has no co-sponsors.
A staff report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission says that Congress should consider that "current customs and tariff levels disproportionately benefit Chinese e-commerce firms," and that packages sent to U.S. consumers "are frequently not inspected. Those that are inspected are often subject to rudimentary visual checks without the technology or screening to trace fabric origin and other violations."
The chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, along with the lead sponsors of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, told Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Silvers that they're concerned about the implementation of UFLPA, and that they intend to call Silvers to testify at a hearing in the near future, along with "a panel of experts on trade, labor trafficking, and supply chain mapping."