CBP in October identified 504 shipments valued at more than $199 million for further examination based on the suspected use of forced labor, including goods subject to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and withhold release orders, the agency said in its most recent operational statistics update. The value of those shipments is up from September, when CBP identified 259 shipments worth more than $102 million (see 2310230037). Also in October, CBP seized 1,499 shipments that contained counterfeit goods valued at more than $160 million if the items had been genuine, the agency said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
A lead author of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is seeking to pass a law mandating the same treatment for goods containing cobalt refined in China. China’s Odious and Brutally Atrocious Labor Trafficking Supply Chain Act, or the Cobalt Supply Chain Act, would tell CBP that all cobalt refined in China should be banned from import, under the assumption it was mined wholly or in part with forced labor or child labor.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is withdrawing a proposed expansion of its Seafood Import Monitoring Program to cover additional species, and will instead conduct a “comprehensive” review of SIMP to consider the overall direction of the program, it said in a notice released Nov. 14.
Entries will "likely continue to be detained" under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act during a government shutdown, and UFLPA detentions likely will continue to be reviewed, albeit at a much slower pace, said customs lawyer Ted Murphy in a blog post on Nov. 13. But it's still unclear exactly what "impact a government shutdown would have on UFLPA related activities, given that the law was not enacted during the last shutdown in December 2018-January 2019," Murphy said. Funding for the federal government expires on Nov. 17 (see 2311080006).
Suppliers are not really focusing on finding forced labor violations past a Tier 2 level, Pierfilippo Natta, KPMG's manager of Trade and Customs, said at a KPMG webinar Nov. 9. The survey that revealed that found 68% of companies surveyed only focused on supplier activity in Tier 1 and Tier 2, Natta said, while only 22% of those surveyed focused on Tier 3 and 19% on Tier 4.
The CBP executive who manages forced labor enforcement said that CBP is working on evaluating "commercially available services that may assist the agency and importers with establishing standardizing programs for origin testing and other types of innovations."
Laura Murphy, director of the forced labor lab at Sheffield Hallam University that identified many of the goods now targeted under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has joined DHS as a policy adviser to Robert Silvers, undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden and the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Mike Crapo, are asking CBP to explain how it uses AI in both trade enforcement and trade facilitation, with detailed questions on where it's used, how it's validated and whether the agency allows importers and exporters to challenge a decision that is based on AI.
House Select Committee on China Republicans wrote to President Joe Biden, asking him to make human rights and military demands of Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which will happen Nov. 15-17.