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.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has joined with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to propose that U.S. and Mexican officials inspect Mexican factories suspected of violating labor standards. Wyden's staff said that if that violation was verified, the U.S. would not give its products duty-free entry, and if there was forced labor, it could block imports from those factories entirely.
CBP should adopt a new e-commerce multi-modal supply chain map to help guide decisions in that area, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) Next Generation Facilitation Subcommittee E-commerce Working Group said in a draft recommendation. CBP released the document ahead of the Feb. 27 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting. The agency should use the map when "considering future policy, automation development, enforcement postures, facilitation programs and education effort," the group said.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet Feb. 27 in Washington, D.C., CBP said in a notice.