International Trade Today is providing readers with the top 20 stories published in 2023. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference numbers.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., the most prominent advocate for restricting de minimis in Congress, said he held an informal hearing in the hopes of building consensus with Republicans. No Republicans attended, but Rep. Don Beyer, a pro-trade Democrat who serves with Blumenauer on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, said in an interview after the hearing that he was swayed.
Congress should remove permanent normal trade relations status for China, but rather than move Chinese imports into Column 2, it should create a China-specific tariff schedule "that restores U.S. economic leverage to ensure that the [Chinese government] abides by its trade commitments and does not engage in coercive or other unfair trade practices and decreases U.S. reliance on [Chinese] imports in sectors important for national and economic security," the House Select Committee on China wrote as one of its dozens of legislative recommendations in its "Strategy to Win America's Economic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party." The report, released Dec. 12, also recommended:
National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America President J.D. Gonzalez said the trade group thinks the Customs Modernization Act is heavily focused on enforcement, and the group is "a little disappointed" that some of the items that NCBFAA talked about with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., didn't find their way into this bill.
A bipartisan Customs Modernization bill would allow CBP to use advance data to enforce customs laws, permit summary forfeiture of certain goods that infringe on intellectual property rights, and allow for streamlined disposition of detained de minimis packages, when CBP did not receive a response from the shipper.
The Customs Modernization bill introduced in the Senate allows CBP to access data from parties in the supply chain other than importers, allows those parties to update and amend their advance data, and authorizes a customs broker or importer of record to convert the pre-entry information into a certified entry filing.
CBP has been threatening ports that it will reduce its presence or even pull out of ports if those ports don't upgrade work space, members of Congress say, and a recently introduced bipartisan bill aims to put a stop to it.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said changing the terms of "de minimis is something that we are going to have a lot of fruitful discussions [on], we are doing that with the Senate. It's a very bipartisan concern."
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.