A bipartisan bill that would require businesses with more than $500 million in gross annual receipts to conduct annual audits to investigate whether there is forced labor among their suppliers or secondary suppliers has been introduced again. Ted Murphy, a trade lawyer at Sidley Austin, wrote that while the Slave-Free Business Certification Act of 2022 has bipartisan sponsorship, from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., "it is not clear whether this bill has much chance of becoming law (a previous version of the bill was introduced in 2020, but did not advance out of committee)."
A U.S. solar panel manufacturer on Feb. 8 filed another request for an anti-circumvention inquiry on solar cells from third countries made from Chinese inputs, including polysilicon wafers and ingots. Auxin Solar says solar cell imports from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia are circumventing the antidumping duty and countervailing duty orders on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China (A-570-979/C-570-980), in a request filed months after a similar petition from a group of anonymous solar producers was rejected by the Commerce Department.
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The tariff on most imported solar panels will drop to 14.75% at 12:01 a.m. on Feb. 7, and bifacial solar panels will continue to be exempt from the global safeguard, a presidential proclamation Feb. 4 says. The tariff rate quota threshold for solar cells will also double from 2.5 GW to 5 GW, making it unlikely any imported cells will be subject to the tariff.
Members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China are asking appropriators in the House and Senate to dedicate more than the $9 million or $10 million currently slated to strengthen CBP enforcement of the ban on imports of goods made with forced labor. "Given the subsequent enactment of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the request by the Biden Administration for additional resources to implement it, we respectfully request that the conference report on the FY2022 bill include an even greater amount for forced labor enforcement," they wrote Feb. 2. Congress has not yet passed bills to fund the government for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2021, but appropriators are trying to reach agreement by Feb. 18 on the rest of the fiscal year's funding levels.
Panelists at a Washington International Trade Association conference Feb. 2 said they're not sure when the supply chain crisis will ease, noting the U.S. brought a record number of containers into the country last year. Jonathan Gold, the National Retail Federation's vice president for supply chains, said he expects the amount to be even higher in 2022.
Sandler Travis managing principal Nicole Bivens Collinson said that Sandler Travis is working with companies to develop comments to the federal government on how to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (see 2201210031) because a lot of companies don't want their names on their comments. "We are creating an ad hoc coalition because I know a lot of companies don't want to go on record," partly "because they may be a global operation that has operations in China," she said, while speaking on a recent webinar hosted by the firm. China prohibits companies from adhering to foreign laws that negatively impact the country.
The AFL-CIO said the House version of the China package "includes critically important fixes" to the Senate's trade title, including removing finished products from the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, changes to antidumping and countervailing duty law, and the change to de minimis, which "would halt China’s exploitation of US de minimis policy."
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP issued a withhold release order on disposable gloves “produced in Malaysia by YTY Industry Holdings Sdn Bhd (YTY Group), including YTY Industry Sdn Bhd, Green Prospect Sdn Bhd, and GP Lumut," the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release Jan. 28. “CBP is entering the new year with a renewed commitment to investigating and enforcing the U.S. prohibition against importing goods made with forced labor,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus said. “We will again dedicate significant resources to rooting out the evil and inhumane practices of forced labor.” The WRO took effect Jan. 28. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also "designated the DHS Chief Procurement Officer as the Department’s Senior Accountable Official to prevent forced labor and other forms of human trafficking in all DHS contracts and acquisitions," DHS said.