Nineteen of the 25 House Ways and Means Democrats, led by Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., are asking U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to continue to push workers' rights at the World Trade Organization, in a letter sent Oct. 12. "[W]e write today to emphasize the importance of including labor and worker rights in the agenda. We support the Biden Administration’s focus on a worker-centered trade policy and were encouraged by the forced labor proposal proposed during the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations. For far too long, labor issues have not been central to the work of the WTO despite clear indications of its prominence in the foundational legal text of the organization as well as Congress’ intent for the WTO to address labor and worker rights," they said. They also asked her to convince other countries to form a working group on labor standards.
A bill that would add more data elements a year after passage to the Seafood Import Monitoring Program passed out of the Natural Resources Committee by voice vote Oct. 13. The bill's authors recently received a letter from the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America saying that the bill would be "crushing to the import process." The letter, sent Oct. 8, also said, "No one wants illegal or fraudulent seafood, or seafood produced by forced labor, to enter the United States. Certainly, our industry is strongly committed to safe and legally compliant supply chains. Compliance is what we do. The challenge is: how best to ensure integrity in seafood supply chains. SIMP already collects more data at entry than just about any other agency for 1,100 species of seafood."
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A summary of negotiations at the World Trade Organization on how to curb overfishing said that some countries are supporting the U.S. proposal to require countries to submit information on any vessels that are using forced labor. However, other countries "reiterated that the WTO is not the appropriate forum for labor issues," according to the summary, which was provided by a Geneva trade official.
The Department of Labor is seeking public comments ahead of updates to its Worst Forms of Child Labor report and two lists it maintains about goods made by forced and child labor, it said in a notice. Among other issues, it “is seeking information on current practices of governments to collaborate with private sector actors through public-private partnerships to reduce the likelihood of child labor and forced labor in the production of goods,” the agency said. “Submissions may include policy documents, reports, statistics, case studies, and many other formats.”
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One measure of how much more common detentions over forced labor have become is that the withhold release order affecting cotton grown in Xinjiang has led to either the detention or diversion of more than 1,000 shipments, said Nate Herman, American Apparel and Footwear Association vice president for policy. Herman said the value of the garments or textiles in those shipments added up to hundreds of millions of dollars, "probably over a billion dollars at this point and only a handful of them have been released, maybe a dozen, maybe a little bit more."
A trade expert who once worked in Hong Kong said the joint statement issued after the U.S.-European Union Trade and Technology Council inaugural meeting shows that prospects for a trans-Atlantic united front against China aren't promising.
The addition of a second forced labor investigations branch (see 2107210040) within CBP is expected to result in more enforcement actions outside of Asia, Ana Hinojosa, who heads CBP’s Trade Remedy and Law Enforcement Directorate, said while speaking at the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones virtual conference Sept. 28. “We are expecting, because we now have two branches, to see a little bit more diversity in where some of the cases originate from,” she said. While Asia will remain a priority within CBP, “I would envision that in this coming year some of the withhold release orders will be focused on cases” in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
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