The House and the Senate have agreed to temporarily fund the federal government through March 1 or March 8, depending on the agency. The continuing resolution in place now ends, for some agencies, on Jan. 19. The two chambers still need to vote on the legislation to extend funding beyond the end of this week.

An agreement between the chairmen of the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees includes authorization for the administration to negotiate a fix to tax laws for foreign investment in Taiwan but doesn't include a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program.

Nineteen members of the House of Representatives, along with three Pacific territory delegates, are publicly shaming Sysco for not cutting ties with Rongcheng Haibo, a processing plant in China that the Outlaw Ocean Project reported employs Uyghur laborers transferred from Western China (see 2310100030).

 The chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on China asked the commerce secretary and the U.S. trade representative to use "all existing trade authorities" to hike tariffs on Chinese legacy chips, including those already incorporated into consumer goods, they said in an emailed news release.

Coalition for a Prosperous America, an organization that has been arguing that de minimis should only apply to gifts and goods brought by consumers as they return from abroad (see 2312140046), wants to kill the Customs Modernization Act of 2023, the bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate that would update CBP authorities in a number of areas (see 2312110048).

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a radio interview in late December, explained that a bill he introduced with fellow Iowa Republican Joni Ernst and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., was "not in any way going to guarantee farmers lower fertilizer costs, but we just want to know why fertilizer prices are going up as high as they have." The bill directs USDA to detail how much fertilizer, of what types, and from what companies and countries, is imported into the U.S., and asks the department to describe the "impacts that antidumping duties and countervailing duties have on prices of fertilizer paid at the retail level."

A bipartisan House bill that would create a pilot program for non-asset-based third-party logistics and warehouses to participate in the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program was reintroduced last month. Reps. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Rob Menendez, D-N.J., Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, introduced the bill, a companion to a Senate version that passed that chamber in July (see 2307210061).

Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Andy Kim, D-N.J., introduced a bill last month that would cover Uruguay under the trade benefits in the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act. "Uruguay is one of America’s best friends in South America and is a shining example of how economic freedom promotes prosperity," Salazar said in a news release. She said she wants to increase economic exchange between the two nations.