CBP seized a shipment 3.97 million nitrile disposable gloves in Cleveland under the forced labor finding issued by the agency earlier this year (see 2103260028), it said in a news release. “The gloves were produced in Malaysia by a subsidiary of Top Glove,” it said. “The estimated value of the shipment was $518,000.”
A proposed bill to create a rebuttable presumption of forced labor for goods made in China's Xinjiang province never came up in a discussion on how to move forward in combating forced labor hosted by the McCain Institute. The April 30 webinar called "Eliminating Human Trafficking and Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains: whose responsibility is it?" instead talked about how consumer pressure could convince companies to do more due diligence beyond first tier suppliers.
Former U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization Dennis Shea says a planned discussion at the WTO about matters that affect trade in cotton “must examine the trade impact of the use of forced labor to pick cotton in China’s Xinjiang province.” Shea, who was writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is now an adjunct fellow, said “ignoring what is happening in Xinjiang would be tantamount to the WTO holding a meeting on global public health and trade without mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic. ... The use of forced labor in the province has likely depressed the global price of cotton, adversely impacted other cotton-exporting nations (particularly those in the developing world) and improperly distorted global trade flows,” and may even be a countervailable subsidy. Shea said the U.S. should raise the issue during the late May meeting.
CBP will take a look at how it can bring foreign-trade zones into the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, Thomas Overacker, CBP executive director-cargo and conveyance security, said April 28 during the virtual National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones spring seminar. “We've committed to explore how we can incorporate FTZs into the CTPAT program,” he said. “We've long considered the documentation and internal controls of your industry as best practices for security and supply chain integrity. It only makes sense that you receive the recognition that you deserve.”
The Federal Communications Commission is exploring whether untrusted vendors should be excluded from the FCC equipment authorization program, acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said April 26 at a virtual workshop on supply chain security, held in conjunction with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “When it comes to network security, the threats are real, the stakes are high, and our defenses need to constantly evolve and improve,” Rosenworcel said. Just saying no isn’t a strategy, “so we’re moving fast,” she said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has been cautioning its clients not to get their hopes up about a reversal of sections 232 and 301 tariffs with the new administration, and Scott McCandless, a principal in the firm's tax policy services group, also sought to manage expectations for trade policy action in Congress in 2021. McCandless, speaking to a webinar audience April 27, said that while forced labor is a hot issue right now, and CBP “is on a more active footing” on forced labor, he doesn't believe that legislation that would create a rebuttable presumption of forced labor in Xinjiang is going to pass this year. “I doubt that moves forward,” he said.
A former Trump political appointee said that he believes the concentration of solar panel making and inputs in China is a major concern for the U.S. as it looks to an energy transition, and suggested the campaign against blood diamonds could be a model for how to deal with human rights abuses alleged in the production of polysilicon in China's Xinjiang province. That campaign relied on traders' desire to avoid reputational risk, and self-policing among distributors. But Keith Krach, formerly State Department undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment from 2019 to the end of the Trump administration, also suggested that a forced labor ban could be a future action.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from April 12-16 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai's conversations with her counterparts from Italy and the Netherlands addressed global overcapacity in steel, according to summaries of the video calls released April 16. The administration has suggested that Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel cannot be removed until overcapacity has been addressed, even when the countries subject to those tariffs are not dumping steel or aluminum in their exports to the U.S.
CBP detained 371 shipments between Oct. 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, due to the possible use of forced labor on the goods, the agency said in newly updated forced labor statistics. That marks an increase of 281 stopped shipments from the previous release of statistics, when CBP said it detained 90 shipments between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2020 (see 2101290050).