China dwelled on trade more than the U.S. did in the countries' respective summaries of the more than three-hour call between their presidents. But one think-tank author said China would like the tariffs to go away, "but will not pay too much to make it happen."
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a letter to colleagues, said it's "likely" that the Senate will consider the National Defense Authorization Act this week, and the China package that passed the Senate in June may be attached to it. That bill, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, included a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (see 2106090041). Schumer said “there seems to be fairly broad” bipartisan support for adding USICA to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow a USICA negotiation with the House “to be completed alongside” the NDAA before the end of the year. The House plans to write its own version of USICA.
Thea Lee, the long-time AFL-CIO trade policy director who is now leading the Labor Department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), acknowledged that apparel companies have challenges in avoiding child labor and forced labor because "it's so ubiquitous" in the sector. She said one way to try to avoid "reputational, legal and operational damage" is to identify the good players. She recommended Better Work, a program to improve working conditions funded by the International Labor Organization and the World Bank. It covers 1,700 factories in nine countries. Lee said the U.S. government helps fund the program in Haiti, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Jordan and Vietnam.
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David Spooner, Washington counsel for the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, said that while the U.S. trade representative's China policy speech was underwhelming, he doesn't think the possibility of renewing 549 exclusions that expired at the end of last year will be the only olive branch to importers hurt by the China trade war. "Will we see other [expired] exclusions open to renewal? A new window open for exclusions? I hear 'yes.' When that will happen, and what that will look like, remains unclear," Spooner said at a virtual USFIA conference Nov. 9.
A bill that would flip the burden of proof on forced labor to say that goods either made in Xinjiang or made by a company that accepts workers transferred from Xinjiang are made with forced labor unless proven otherwise has been attached to the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. That means the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is more likely to pass the Senate before the end of the year.
CBP issued a withhold release order on disposable gloves “produced in Malaysia by a group of companies collectively known as Smart Glove," the agency said in a news release Nov. 4. The “group of companies includes Smart Glove Corporation Sdn Bhd, GX Corporation Sdn Bhd, GX3 Specialty Plant, Sigma Glove Industries, and Platinum Glove Industries Sdn Bhd.” Smart Glove was one of several Malaysian companies named in recent forced labor allegations from Andy Hall, a British human rights activist (see 2105240022).
Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Oct. 25-29 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.