The inability of CBP to stop all goods made with Uyghur forced labor was one of the focuses of a trade hearing hosted on Staten Island by the House Ways and Means Committee, and when committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., asked a witness what more could be done to crack down, Uyghur activist Nury Turkel said the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act should be expanded to cover all of China.
Twenty-seven House Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, asked CBP to defend its implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, in light of a recent report from the Uyghur Human Rights Project (see 2209060033). They asked if any red jujube dates from Xinjiang have entered the U.S. since June 21, and if so, how many shipments have done so.
Peter Quinter, former customs and international trade attorney at GrayRobinson, joined Gunster as the leader of its Customs and International Trade Law Group, Quinter said in a post on his LinkedIn account. Quinter advises on issues involving investigations by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. Before entering private practice, Quinter served as counsel at the Southeast Regional Headquarters of the U.S. Customs Service.
Teak imports from Myanmar continue to flow into the U.S. despite sanctions on the state-owned Myanmar Timber Enterprise, Justice for Myanmar said in a recent report. The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned MTE in April, making transactions with the company illegal. "[I]mporters in the US are purchasing timber from private companies that are acting as brokers in Myanmar," the activist group said. Such importers are effectively "evading sanctions by not buying directly from MTE." OFAC didn't comment on the report. A CBP spokesperson said the agency works with OFAC "to address sanctions related to Myanmar." CBP "conducts intelligence, research and analysis" to prevent such imports," he said. The agency's enforcement efforts are coordinated with "U.S. government trade policy and law enforcement agencies." CBP also "implements, with significant input from the trade community, distribution chain management programs to better identify and facilitate known legitimate imports, leaving more resources to focus on higher risk shipments."
David Spooner, Washington counsel for the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, said that while the U.S. trade representative's China policy speech was underwhelming, he doesn't think the possibility of renewing 549 exclusions that expired at the end of last year will be the only olive branch to importers hurt by the China trade war. "Will we see other [expired] exclusions open to renewal? A new window open for exclusions? I hear 'yes.' When that will happen, and what that will look like, remains unclear," Spooner said at a virtual USFIA conference Nov. 9.
The State Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control recently announced a series of sanctions against Russia, including import restrictions on firearms and the designation of entities and individuals connected the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Aleksey Navalny. Coming on the one-year anniversary of Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok nerve agent, the new sanctions are being carried out “in concert” with the United Kingdom, State said.
Paul Marquardt joined Davis Polk as a partner in its Washington, D.C.-based Financial Institutions Group, the firm announced in a June 14 news release. Marquardt previously led the foreign investment and national security practice at Cleary Gottlieb, where he worked with the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the most prominent China hawks in Congress, thinks that the Bureau of Industry and Security is buried within an organization “hostile to the aggressive use of export controls,” and so it should be moved from the Commerce Department to the State Department, because, he says, that department puts national security first. Cotton, who has published a lengthy report on what he calls the economic long war with China, discussed his views during an online program at the Reagan Presidential Foundation on Feb. 18.