The White House is requesting $239 million in funding to hire an additional 1,000 CBP officers “to stop illicit fentanyl and other contraband from entering the U.S.,” it said in a fact sheet released March 11 alongside President Joe Biden’s FY 2025 budget request. The funding had already been sought in October as part of an emergency supplemental request but had gone unmet by Congress, the fact sheet said. The budget request also seeks “$34 million" for CBP and ICE "to combat child exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking,” the fact sheet said.
International Trade Commissioners grappled with how they should fulfill the administration's request for a report on the export competitiveness of the Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian, Indonesian and Pakistani apparel sectors over the last 11 years -- is it to uncover how those countries' successes could offer lessons to other developing countries that want to industrialize? Is the success of Bangladesh, which is near to crossing the threshold into a middle-income country largely on the strength of its garment sector, a country with an "unnatural and unfair advantage," because of its suppression of unions and wages, as the AFL-CIO's Eric Gottwald asserted?
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she will be bringing up China's overproduction of electric vehicles as part of the 2026 USMCA review process, implying that she expects Mexico to reject Chinese investment in its auto manufacturing sector.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a LAN transformer that allows cars to communicate to networks, made by Sichuan Jingweida Technology, was the reason Audis and Porsches couldn't enter the U.S. until that part was replaced. That firm is on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act's entity list.
A bipartisan bill has been introduced that would set country-by-country de minimis levels, instruct the administration to reconsider U.S. tariffs "with the focus on the principle of reciprocity" for most favored nation rates, and open a dialogue with Mexico and Canada on allowing Costa Rica and Uruguay to join USMCA.
Both co-sponsors of a bill to restrict Chinese goods from de minimis eligibility said that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who has the power to advance the bill, is interested in marking up the bill.
FloraTrace is launching new insurance coverage for importers facing unforeseen expenses due to enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, it said in a March 4 news release. Offered through its subsidiary Rezylient, the coverage will be triggered by receipt of a UFLPA detention notice, with covered losses potentially including storage of a detained entry, attorney fees, consultant fees, demurrage, drayage fees, exam fees, and extra costs and expenses including supply chain tracing subject to agreement by underwriters, Rezylient said on its website. The insurance may also be paired with FloraTrace’s origin testing and verification services, providing “financial protection against unforeseen detentions and disruptions in the supply chain, while also offering importers a proactive tool for risk management,” the news release said.
The European Council and Parliament reached a deal on a new set of rules to ban imports suspected of being made with forced labor, including how the ban will be enforced and how the bloc will investigate and penalize violations.
The Canada Border Services Agency is expecting "movement" on a bill that will prohibit goods from Xinjiang from entering Canada, Stephanie Briere, the director of commercial programs for the agency, said at a North Country Chamber of Commerce webinar on Feb. 29. S-204, first introduced in November 2021, would ban imports that were manufactured or produced wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.
In FY 2024 so far, more than 485 million packages have entered the U.S. under de minimis, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a March 1 statement. That continues an upward trend from 1.05 billion de minimis shipments in all of FY 2023, which was an increase of 53% from the 685 million de minimis shipments in FY 2022, he said.