Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Silvers, who chairs the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force that maintains UFLPA's entity list, told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that FLETF has an "active pipeline of referrals we are examining, and we anticipate more additions in coming months."
The Treasury Department published its spring 2023 regulatory agenda for CBP. There are no mentions of any new trade-related rulemakings, though the agency did move two rules off its agenda to a lower-priority list of planned long-term actions. One of the rules would finalize in the customs regulations the increase of the de minimis level from $200 to $800 under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015. The other would amend CBP's regulations on disclosure of information regarding merchandise bearing suspected counterfeit trademarks by creating "a procedure for the disclosure of information otherwise protected by the Trade Secrets Act to a trademark owner when merchandise bearing suspected counterfeit trademarks has been voluntarily abandoned."
One of the leaders in the move to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act recently introduced a new bill that would require the administration to enforce the ban on goods made with child labor, particularly cobalt and lithium.
The lack of disclosure in Enforce and Protect Act evasion proceedings and the deferential standard of review "stack the deck" in favor of the alleger, giving importers "a lot to complain about in the EAPA process," customs lawyer Larry Friedman of Barnes/Richardson said in a July 6 blog post. Even importers who believe they have conducted reasonable due diligence may have serious unexpected liabilities that come out during the investigation, he said.
House lawmakers proposed several trade-related amendments as part of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, including a Democrat-backed measure that could require publicly traded companies to annually disclose whether their imports originate in or are sourced in part from China’s Xinjiang region or from factories “implicated in forced labor schemes.”
Sheffield Hallam University issued reports detailing Uyghur forced labor in the cotton, polysilicon, PVC and metals industries presaged withhold release orders and detentions against goods containing those inputs. Now, its Forced Labor Lab is offering the public a massive list of companies that operate in the Uyghur region, whose products are therefore considered to be made with forced labor unless importers can prove otherwise.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., recently said CBP needs to do more to know what's inside packages imported under the de minimis threshold, adding that the agency “has no idea what's coming in.”
The Labor Council of the USMCA discussed several topics, including "key labor policies on violence and discrimination in the workplace," as well as "cooperation and technical assistance projects," and "implementation of the USMCA’s provision related to imports produced with forced labor," at a meeting June 28-29 in Mexico City. The meeting included government representatives who oversee labor issues from all three member countries. The council also discussed "the USMCA’s Labor Chapter implementation and conferred on further opportunities to collaborate on labor priorities as a North America Region," the joint statement from the meeting said. This was the Labor Council's second meeting, after the first took place in June 29, 2021 (see 2106300043).
The ability to import low-value packages without paying duties is a benefit to consumers and businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups that use de minimis are arguing, as they lobby against bipartisan efforts to curtail de minimis eligibility.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters: