International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Nov. 4-8 in case they were missed.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet Dec. 4, beginning at 1 p.m., in Washington, CBP said in a notice.
NEW YORK -- While CBP recently issued multiple withhold release orders for goods the agency believes were produced with forced labor (see 1910010017 and 1902040017 and 1805210028), ICE is also working to increased enforcement of forced labor laws. The enforcement effort is not going to stop with civil penalties, warned Kenneth Kennedy, senior policy advisor for forced labor programs at the Homeland Security Investigations division at ICE. "We are teeing up criminal investigations within the next year, or two years," he said, and U.S. business officials will the targets.
CBP issued a new withhold release order on tobacco from Malawi and products containing tobacco from Malawi on Nov. 1, the agency said in a news release. "The products will be detained at all U.S. ports of entry," it said. "CBP issued the WRO based on information collected by the agency that reasonably indicates the tobacco from Malawi is produced using forced labor and forced child labor."
CBP should allow for seizures of goods from the Xinjiang region of China if there are certain "red flags" that indicate the use of forced labor, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in an Oct. 16 report. The use of red flags is necessary "due to a lack of meaningful access to Xinjiang and the level of surveillance and repression there that render audits and other traditional fact-finding impossible," CSIS said. The report was released ahead of an Oct. 17 Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing on the use of forced labor by Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 30 - Oct. 4 in case they were missed.
CBP issued five new withhold release orders on Oct. 1, preventing imports of multiple products due to the possible use of forced or child labor in the supply chains, the agency said in a news release. The WROs are dated Sept. 30 on CBP's list of orders. Importers of affected goods will "have the opportunity to either re-export the detained shipments at any time or to submit information to CBP demonstrating that the goods are not in violation," CBP said.
CBP may soon implement increased bonding requirements for new importers that are bringing in merchandise subject to antidumping and countervailing duties, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) Intelligent Enforcement Subcommittee said in a report. CBP hopes to issue a Federal Register notice in August setting new single transaction bond requirements as early as Sept. 21 or Sept. 28, the report said. But the COAC will recommend the new requirements be delayed until bonding formulas can be worked out, the report said.
Nonprofit groups, led by the International Labor Rights Forum, have filed a formal complaint with CBP asking that it block imports of palm oil from Malaysian plantations run by FGV, because the product is harvested with forced labor. The complaint, filed Aug. 15, says that migrant laborers are recruited in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal and the Philippines, and after arriving, are charged large fees for the jobs that turn them into indentured servants for months. The groups, which include SumofUs and Rainforest Action Network, also say that the companies seize the workers' passports so they cannot leave.
The ICE Homeland Security Investigations Global Trade Investigations Division partnered with Liberty Shared, "a nongovernmental organization with global coverage founded in Hong Kong, to combat forced labor in global commerce," ICE said in a news release. "By using its unique authorities, and by partnering with organizations like Liberty Shared with information about corporate supply chains and financial flows, HSI seeks to gather information that will lead to successful prosecutions and significant steps being made in eliminating forced labor," the agency said. "By eliminating the financial draw of using forced labor, and any profit to be made by the exploitation of human beings to produce goods for market, HSI seeks to have a positive impact on reducing forced labor." The NGO has built a "global infrastructure to support the protection of vulnerable people with many partners in civil society, banking/finance, the legal industry, information service and technology providers," ICE said.