Senate and House lawmakers reached an agreement on compromise text that merges versions of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act from each chamber, and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told International Trade Today on Dec. 14 that he hopes the new bill can pass the House later in the day. It is scheduled for a vote after 6 p.m. McGovern continued to say his version had been stronger than the one written by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., but said he had to consider what could get through the Senate. Rubio's bill passed the Senate under unanimous consent this summer.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai took a victory lap at the U.S Chamber of Commerce's Transatlantic Business Works Summit, pointing to the removal of the digital services taxes on American firms, the agreement on steel and aluminum and the resolution of a 17-year fight on subsidies for Airbus and Boeing.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act passed the House of Representatives 428-1, with only Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voting against it.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., criticized business interests as more allied with Chinese interests than with American ones, and said that even as a Uyghur Forced Labor bill was expected to advance in the House, it wasn't much closer to becoming law.
Ilissa Shefferman is now CBP's forced labor division branch chief-Investigations East and Adam Sulewski is branch chief-Investigations West, the agency said in an updated list of contacts. The division previously had only one branch focused on investigations (see 2109290023)
The newly formed Coalition for Economic Partnerships in the Americas does not explicitly say that the textile rules of origin in CAFTA-DR need reform, though it calls on the administration "to do what previous administrations ignored: to structure trade to support investment in the United States and our allies in Central America. In order for our economy to thrive, we must eliminate the bureaucratic red tape that hinders production and investment in the region."
A White House action plan to combat human trafficking, which tackles forced labor both in the U.S. and abroad, includes a "priority action" to coordinate and cooperate with other countries' law enforcement bodies to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of human trafficking on fishing vessels and in "the potential risk areas throughout the seafood supply chain, such as shore-based processing operations." The plan also says that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will continue to encourage other countries to put in place bans on imports of goods made with forced labor, as it did through the NAFTA rewrite. USTR Katherine Tai said in a release noting the plan's goals, "At USTR, we will use the power of trade to be a force for good and will continue to address forced labor and human trafficking in global supply chains." Government agencies will continue to work to promote federal resources on how to avoid forced labor in supply chains to companies. "Facilitated discussions will include both general information sessions and deeper discussions to address specific challenges and opportunities in the various industries," the plan said.
The leader of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee focused on making it easier for domestic industry to win antidumping and countervailing duty cases and said that the de minimis statute needs to be altered, in a hearing designed to talk about how Chinese practices damage workers, businesses and the environment.
The National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill, hasn't gone to the Senate floor due to disagreement over an amendment to include the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the sponsor of that amendment, is the only reason the NDAA can't go to the floor.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said the $800 de minimis threshold amounts to a huge loophole, and he's going to propose major changes to the law. He said that millions of packages a day enter the U.S. under de minimis, and "nobody's monitoring it. We don't know what's forced labor, what has circumvented intellectual property, counterfeit goods, drugs. CBP's getting better, but who can monitor millions of packages a day?"