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.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet Aug. 21, beginning at 1 p.m. EDT, in Buffalo, New York, CBP said in a notice.
Humanity United and the Freedom Fund are seeking applicants for grants that will be used "to conduct on-the-ground investigations and evidence collection to link forced labor practices with specific U.S. imports," the groups said in a request for proposals released last month. The effort, called the Tariff Act Legal Fund, "aims to catalyze enforcement of the import ban by supporting civil society organisations to collect and submit evidence to CBP," the groups said. The legal fund will provide for grants of $25,000 to $40,000 to as many as five CSOs, the groups said. The CSO will be expected to file a formal forced labor petition with CBP at the end of the grant period, the RFP said. "While the fund does not focus on specific countries or industries," proposals should involve goods mentioned on the Labor Department's list on goods made with forced or child labor and should not already be the subject of a CBP withhold release order. Application forms are due Sept. 16.
Although the labor witness at the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the new NAFTA said labor leaders "remain optimistic about the ability to resolve the issues" with the rewrite, Michael Wessel also said they "will not hesitate to oppose" ratification if they are not satisfied. Wessel, who is the staff chairman to the Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy, said the current rewrite, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, "is not good enough."
CHICAGO -- The discussion around including forced labor compliance within Trusted Trader requirements is ongoing after the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee issued recommendations on the subject, said Manuel Garza, director of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. "Some of them we agreed with, some of them we didn't agree with," he said. "There's probably going to be a couple of new recommendations that COAC is going to provide back to CBP for the next COAC meeting." Garza spoke July 24 at the CBP Trade Symposium.
Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote to Kevin McAleenan, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, telling him that most cocoa from the Ivory Coast should be stopped at the ports. The letter they sent July 16 said that a report in The Washington Post in June had photos and first-hand accounts that West African cocoa producers rely on indentured child labor.
The Treasury Department published its spring 2019 regulatory agenda for CBP. The agenda includes a new rulemaking that would amend CBP's regulations to revise the language on duty-free goods returned. The agency will try to issue an interim final rule by August this year. Specifically, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act extended duty-free treatment to products of non-U.S. origin exported and returned to the U.S. within three years after having been exported, and created a separate tariff schedule "subheading for returned U.S. Government property allowing duty-free return of U.S. Government property without time and origin restrictions."
Uzbekistan human rights activists who traveled to Washington -- and the Uzbek ambassador -- are asking the textile industry to ends its boycott of Uzbek cotton, because of new government policies that have ended child labor and greatly reduced forced labor during the harvest.