USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation announced March 21 that Special Import Quota #23 for upland cotton will be established March 28, allowing importation of 6,526,283 kilograms (29,975 bales) of upland cotton, unchanged from the previous quota period. The quota will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than June 25, 2024, and entered into the U.S. by Sept. 23, 2024. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally adjusted average rate for the November 2023 through January 2024 period, the most recent three months for which data is available.
The Commerce Department released the final version of regulations on March 22 that will make various key changes in the administration of antidumping and countervailing duty regulations. The changes take effect April 24.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 43-0 on March 20 to approve a bill that would add Chinese drone company Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI) to the FCC's Covered List, thereby prohibiting DJI technology from operating on U.S. communications infrastructure. The move came eight days after the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology took similar action (see 2403140013).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website March 21, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
CBP in February identified 540 shipments valued at more than $306 million for further examination based on the suspected use of forced labor, including goods subject to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and withhold release orders, the agency said in its most recent operational statistics update. The number and value of those shipments is up from January, when CBP identified 424 shipments worth more than $236 million (see 2402130070). Also in February, CBP seized 1,645 shipments that contained counterfeit goods valued at more than $345 million if the items had been genuine, the agency said.
The auto industry is grappling with a range of questions about how the EU’s upcoming forced labor-related rules will affect their supply chains, especially for individual car components, an auto industry official and lawyer said this week.
Although the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee has been pushing to exclude Chinese goods from de minimis (see 2403060089), interviews this week with a half-dozen members of the 42-person committee show the momentum for changing the law is fairly muted.
A European Parliament committee this week approved an updated version of new EU-wide supply chain due diligence rules that represent a narrower version from the original proposal but would still require certain companies to conduct specific due diligence on their supply chains to address various environmental and social concerns.
If Donald Trump is elected to a second presidential term, his administration should focus on communicating better with other governments and American companies about upcoming policy decisions, said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative.