Recent congressional pressure to ease cross-border data flows has the potential to fuel economic growth and job generation in the U.S., said the Telecommunications Industry Association in an Oct. 27 statement. Four senators urged the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Oct. 24 to remove data flow restrictions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (see 1410270005). "The ability to send commercial data across borders with minimal unnecessary restrictions is vital for U.S. businesses of all sizes and all sectors that conduct business here in the United States and around the world,” said the TIA. “A great example is how e-commerce has rapidly become the way that U.S. small businesses access global markets to expand their exports.” Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, alongside Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. and Commerce ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., sent the letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman Oct. 24 (here).

Four senators want Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations to properly account for cross-border data flows. Any agreement “must include meaningful, clear obligations, enforceable through a strong and effective dispute settlement mechanism, that prohibit unnecessary limitations on the cross-border transfer, storage and processing of data or the physical location of computing infrastructure,” said Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, alongside Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. and Commerce ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., in a joint letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman Oct. 24 (here). “We urge you to stand firm against efforts by other countries to seek reservations and overly broad exceptions that would undermine these obligations and provide lower levels of protection for trade in digital goods and services as compared to other areas of trade.”

The AFL-CIO and a number of other unions launched an advertisement campaign on Oct. 27 to drum up opposition to passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) during the coming lame-duck session. TPA, also known as fast-track, will shepherd through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, another U.S. trade deal cloaked in secrecy and one that will cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, said union leaders in an Oct. 27 statement (here). The unions, including the United Automobile Workers and United Steelworkers, will be running anti-TPA ads through nearly the end of November in the Capitol South Metro station in Washington, D.C., one of two stations regularly used to commute to Capitol Hill.

House Ways and Means ranking member Sandy Levin, D-Mich., will evaluate the state-of-play in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks firsthand at the upcoming TPP summit in Sydney, Australia, his office said. From Oct. 25-27, Levin will meet with TPP trade ministers and sit in on briefings, said an Oct. 21 statement. “There are many outstanding issues within the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and Congressman Levin wants to see their status firsthand," said a spokesman in the statement. Levin is a long-time critic of U.S. trade policy, and often pushes for more worker protections in U.S. trade agreements. He spelled out a range of demands for TPP in a report released in late September, including sweeping structural reform of Vietnamese labor rights (see 14091914). Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., along with Senate Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and former chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in January, but Levin declined to endorse the bill (see 14091914). Passage of TPA is widely seen as necessary to pass TPP implementation legislation.

More than 400 ports, transportation services and industry organizations pushed Congress on Oct. 22 to provide harbor maintenance funding, administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in appropriations legislation that mirrors allocations in a water bill passed earlier this year. The Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRRDA) directs full use by 2025 of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF) for maintenance and dredging, with annual increases in use over the next 10 years (see 14051612).

U.S. business and trade advocacy coalitions are digging in on their demand for Congress to immediately grant the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to rescind parts of the country-of-origin (COOL) labeling regime that the World Trade Organization says violates global trade rules. The WTO ruled on Oct. 20 the COOL regulations on meat muscle cuts favor U.S. industry and are inconsistent with cornerstone WTO agreements on tariffs and technical barriers on trade (see 1410200033). The U.S. will have 30 days to appeal the ruling, and if that does not happen, the WTO is afforded 60-90 days to adopt the Oct. 20 report, said industry group executives on an Oct. 20 conference call.

If the World Trade Organization rules against the U.S. in a high-profile country-of-origin labeling dispute, Canada and Mexico may be in the position to implement retaliations on U.S. industry before Congress can change the labeling regime to bring it into compliance with global trade rules, said leaders from the National Association of Manufacturing (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 14. Many analysts and industry representatives expect the WTO to side with Canada and Mexico, but the WTO has yet to go public with its decision (see 14100724). “The history is clear. Buyer supply chain needs result in export markets being lost even before retaliation is authorized,” said NAM Senior Vice President Aric Newhouse and the chamber’s executive vice president Bruce Josten. “More damaging, once export markets are lost, it takes years to regain the market.” The Agriculture Department may not be able to act unilaterally to reform the labeling regime, said the letter.

A leading congressional supporter of the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank, along with a Republican colleague, unveiled a draft bill on Oct. 14 that would extend the charter of the credit agency through fiscal year 2019, while requiring the bank to put in place revenue-generating mechanisms to be self-sufficient. The draft (here) would implement a number of safeguards, including the appointment of an Ex-Im Chief Risk Officer. It would also require the Inspector General of the Bank to complete an independent audit of risk in the bank’s portfolio.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., prodded House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., on Oct. 9 to boost efforts to find a way to make the Highway Trust Fund solvent over the long-term. President Barack Obama signed into law legislation in early August that replenished the coffers of the fund through May 2015 (see 14081001). “The Highway Trust Fund is a problem that can be solved, and this Congress must uphold its responsibility to come up with a sustainable funding solution,” said Boxer in a letter. “We cannot afford to wait for action until the deadline which falls at the beginning of the critical summer construction season, or to kick the can down the road any longer.” Some lawmakers reject raising corporate taxes to make the fund solvent (see 14050625). Congressional revenue and infrastructure committees have jurisdiction over the fund.

Leadership on the Senate Appropriations Committee should block any attempt to scale back or eliminate country-of-origin labeling (COOL) through fiscal year 2015 funding bills, nearly one-third of the Senate said in a letter to Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and ranking member Richard Shelby, R-Ala. The World Trade Organization compliance panel report in the COOL dispute, which pits the U.S. against Canada and Mexico, is past due at this point, but the WTO process will probably continue into 2015, said the Oct. 6 letter, led by Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. and signed by 30 more lawmakers.