CBP recently issued a new withhold release order due to suspicions of goods made by forced labor, said CBP's list of such orders. The March 5 order applies to "Toys" from China made by "Huizhou Mink Industrial CO. LTD." The WRO is the first order since September of 2016 (see 1609190019). The lack of WROs was the subject of concern among lawmakers during a hearing with Acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan last fall (see 1710240033).
Two class-action lawsuits filed Feb. 23 in Massachusetts federal district court allege Hershey and Mars violated state consumer protection laws by failing to disclose the use of forced and child labor in their supply chains. Danell Tomasella, on behalf of consumers that purchased Hershey and Mars products in Massachusetts during the past four years, alleges those consumers would not have bought Hershey and Mars candy had they known the companies had forced and child labor in their supply chains. Tomasella filed a similar lawsuit against Nestle on Feb. 9.
CBP plans to issue procedures for ACE outages before the end of the month, the agency said in an Outages Working Group report released ahead of the Feb. 28 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting in Miami. CBP will "publish the public downtime procedures document by the end of February," it said. Following some COAC recommendations in November, "CBP’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has assigned a development team to begin working on the recommended enhancements," it said. "Enhancements to the Dashboard will be implemented throughout calendar year 2018."
CBP’s use of audits and other enforcement tools has grown increasingly coordinated and targeted in the years since passage of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, customs consultants from KPMG said during a webinar on Feb. 13. The passage of TFTEA marked the beginning of a “different era” than that launched by the Customs Modernization Act in 1993, with the pendulum “completely swung” from informed compliance to enforcement around priority trade issues identified in the new law, they said.
CBP collected about $34.8 billion in customs duties during fiscal year 2017, the agency said in its trade and travel report for FY 2017. That's a decrease from the $35.2 billion the agency collected in duties during FY 2016. Still, CBP collections in total duties, taxes and other fees during the year were pretty much flat -- about $40.1 billion -- when compared with the previous year. The agency also saw about a five percent increase in cargo containers from FY16, it said. "CBP processed $2.39 trillion in imports in FY2017, equating to 33.2 million entries and more than 28.5 million imported cargo containers at U.S. ports of entry," the agency said.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet Feb. 28 in Miami, CBP said in a notice.
A group of ocean conservation groups released a Seafood Slavery Risk Tool on Feb. 1 that is meant to help identify the use of forced labor within seafood supply chains. The tool, run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, Liberty Asia and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, is "a risk indicator tool that provides knowledge and information based on professional assessments and perspectives from the fishing industry, civil society, and the anti-modern slavery community," the groups said in a blog post. The tool "will apply a consistent methodology, supported by a wide range of credible resources from local information to specific, published material and information from various due diligence technology organizations," the groups said. The risk tool is needed due to low levels of transparency in the global fishing industry, they said. CBP recently stopped some seafood shipments from China over forced labor concerns (see 1710060011).
The U.S. Council of International Business will "continue to oppose policies that handicap U.S. trade" in 2018, the USCIB said in its trade agenda. Among those policies are a "lack of clear standards at U.S. customs for forced labor," it said. The trade group will also "urge the Administration not to introduce new proposals in NAFTA that will weaken existing provisions or negate the benefits that U.S. companies derive from the U.S. being part of NAFTA," it said. USCIB will push for trade deals with the EU and Asian countries "to ensure that American goods and services companies have open and fair access to the markets in the Asia-Pacific."
CBP stopped additional shipments in recent months over the possible use of North Korean labor, a CBP spokesman said by email. CBP "has taken enforcement actions to prevent the North Korean goods from entering the U.S. supply chain on a number [15] of shipments involving manufacturing performed or suspected to be performed by the labor of North Korean nationals or citizens, which is prohibited under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (P.L. 115-44)," he said by email. Acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan mentioned some holds on seafood shipments from China in October during a Senate hearing (see 1710240033)
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for 2017 in case they were missed.