The Customs Modernization Act is a bit of a misnomer, a Sidley Austin advisory says, encouraging firms to tell Sen. Bill Cassidy's office that changes are needed to make it beneficial to importers. The discussion draft of the bill was released so that it wouldn't produce unintended consequences for importers or businesses that provide services to importers, the Louisiana Republican's spokesman said (see 2111030035).
Fifteen Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are asking executives at 62 U.S. companies that import clothing from Haiti to ask their suppliers if they are complying with health insurance and social security contribution requirements. The letter -- led by Reps. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and Terri Sewell of Alabama and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, and released to the public Nov. 8 -- says that independent reports found that 84% of factories are not making the required contributions, and some workers have died because they did not have insurance when they fell ill. "We write to you because your companies benefit from those trade programs and rely on Haitian employers and garment workers to create your products, and thus, you have a vested interest in and unique opportunity to help improve and strengthen U.S.-Haiti garment supply chains. As you know, U.S. trade policies have increasingly prioritized collaboration across supply chains to improve labor standards," they said. They asked executives to respond to the letter by Dec. 1. The companies included Calvin Klein, Carters, Cintas, Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, Jockey, Li & Fung, Reebok, Target and Walmart.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the generally pro-trade New Democrat Coalition, told a webinar audience that reaching an international agreement to lower tariffs on environmental goods and services would be good for U.S. companies, since the U.S. has lower tariffs on these goods than the European Union and China. She said that the European Union and China both export more environmental goods than the U.S. does.
The Senate Finance Committee voted 15-13 to recommend that Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus be the next CBP commissioner. All Democrats and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., supported Magnus, who would be the first openly gay head of CBP, in the Nov. 3 vote. A floor vote hasn't been scheduled for his nomination.
The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a Nov. 3 vote on Chris Magnus' nomination for CBP commissioner.
Amazon announced that it supports a rewrite of the House bill that would require e-commerce platforms to verify the identity of some high-volume third-party sellers, and would also require some disclosure to consumers about those sellers.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and 14 other Democrats on the committee, are asking the administration to undertake a thorough investigation of the sugarcane harvest in the Dominican Republic, which uses many Haitian workers. That sugar is exported to the U.S., they said. "It has been more than ten years since a Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) labor submission requested the U.S. government investigate human trafficking, forced and child labor, hazardous working and living conditions, and other labor rights violations in the Dominican sugar industry," they said in a statement. "Despite attempts to address those problems, the recent [news] reports raise grave concerns of continued inhumane conditions that we simply cannot tolerate in our supply chains. We are eager to work with the Biden administration, which is renewing America’s commitment to human rights and labor fairness, to ensure that the United States is aggressively working to end to these outrageous, abusive practices.”
Although it's not known what sort of electric vehicle purchase incentives might be included in Build Back Better legislation, Canada and Mexico are arguing to congressional leaders that offering larger tax credits for U.S.-assembled electric vehicles hurts both the integrated North American auto industry and undermines the USMCA.
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., opened up a discussion on a recent report on targeted decoupling based on risk, with a focus on artificial intelligence, at a virtual event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Oct. 22. Hill said the discussion was "long overdue," and that China's direction is "squarely in conflict with the global order, balance of power in East Asia, and the continued open, market-based trading system."
The House Ethics Committee unanimously found that "there is substantial reason to believe" that Rep. Mike Kelly's wife purchased at least $15,000 worth of stock in Cleveland-Cliffs based on non-public information about a Section 232 investigation into the import of laminations for stacked cores for incorporation into transformers, stacked and wound cores for incorporation into transformers, electrical transformers, and transformer regulators. The Kellys live in Butler, Pennsylvania, where about 1,400 people work for the steel company, making electrical steel. The company had repeatedly argued that unless the 25% tariffs on steel were extended to these downstream products, it would have to close the Butler plant.