The Senate voted 55-42 Jan. 28 to invoke cloture on homeland security secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas, setting up a Feb. 1 confirmation vote. Six Republicans voted to move forward on Mayorkas, including the Homeland Security Committee's incoming lead Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. The chamber also set a Feb. 2 vote to confirm transportation secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg, which he’s likely to easily clear. The Senate Commerce Committee recently advanced Buttigieg 21-3.
Thousands of restaurants nationwide urged congressional leaders Jan. 28 to remove wines, cheeses, olive oil and other food products imported from Europe from the tariff list designed to punish the European Union for aircraft subsidies to Airbus. “Restaurants, bars, and shops, the social heart of our local communities, cannot afford 25 percent tariffs on European food and drink products and cannot recover with them in place. Our industry needs the tariffs to end immediately,” their Jan. 28 letter said. “As the crisis facing our industry deepens, the urgency of tariff relief grows. Our formula for survival through this economic crisis is simple: for each customer, we need to maximize sales of profit drivers like wine by the glass, and minimize the cost of inputs like cheese, olive oil, meat, and other food.”
Dozens of agriculture trade groups wrote to Senate Finance Committee leaders urging them to confirm Katherine Tai, the administration's nominee for U.S. trade representative. The letter, dated Jan. 26, said, “Ms. Tai is eminently qualified and deeply familiar with the mission of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in opening foreign markets and reducing barriers for U.S. food and agriculture workers and exporters for the benefit of consumers in the U.S. and across the globe. We especially value Ms. Tai’s demonstrated ability to build bipartisan support for trade policies.”
Fashion trade groups are asking Congress to ensure that withhold release orders are administrable, and that CBP is fully funded so that it can implement effective WROs to fight forced labor in Xinjiang. The American Apparel and Footwear Association, the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the U.S. Fashion Industry Association wrote to leaders of both chambers of Congress from both parties saying they support legislation that builds on private sector efforts to root out forced labor in supply chains.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a Senate Finance Committee member, said the Treasury Department secretary might be confirmed early next week, if not sooner, and he thinks it's more likely negotiations at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on taxes could progress than will a settlement of the Airbus-Boeing dispute. Treasury leads on the digital services taxes (DST) front, while the U.S. trade representative, whose nomination will not come as quickly, leads on Airbus-Boeing.
The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Jan. 26 to hear from the nominee to head the Commerce Department, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D).
House Democrats, including Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., are asking that Mexico and Canada agree to their commitments under the Paris Climate Accords as a condition of the USMCA. As a senator, Vice President Kamala Harris voted against USMCA because it did not address climate; the fast track legislation that directed the executive branch's negotiating priorities prohibited including climate in trade agreements.
Incoming Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told reporters on a Jan. 13 conference call that he's going to work closely with the Joe Biden administration to make sure the rapid response labor mechanism is used against Mexico, and he wants similar provisions to be used with other countries. Wyden, who emphasized unemployment relief, infrastructure, drug pricing, taxes and fighting greenhouse gas emissions ahead of trade, said that he's very impressed with the choice of Katherine Tai for U.S. trade representative, and said he hopes to have a Finance Committee hearing on her nomination “very soon.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, introduced a bill Jan. 6 that would bar countries that aren't following international environmental obligations or enforcing their environmental laws from participating in the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program. Currently, GSP is not in effect. In the previous Congress, Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., introduced a bill (see 2012080049) that included this plank, as well as eligibility predicated on whether the country is making continual progress toward establishing “the rule of law, political pluralism, the right to due process, a fair trial and equal protection under the law,” and whether those countries are working to “reduce poverty, increase the availability of health care and educational opportunities,” and combat corruption. All legislation introduced last year has to be reintroduced in the new Congress to be considered.
President Donald Trump signed into law an act that requires the Department of Homeland Security to submit a plan within 180 days of how it can get to 100% high-throughput scanning of freight rail and commercial and passenger vehicles using large-scale, non-intrusive inspection systems. The Securing American Ports Act was signed on Jan. 5. The agency is to tell Congress how much of the traffic is currently scanned, the personnel assigned to those efforts, and seizure data on contraband discovered by that scanning. The report should create benchmarks on how to get to 100% scanning within six years, and the costs to get there, in both government spending and suspected delays. After the first report is submitted, DHS is to update Congress one year later on progress, then again every other year.