Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican who said he was tough on China before more senators got on the bandwagon, said corporate interests and U.S. interests have diverged when it comes to globalization. Rubio, who represents Florida, was speaking at a American Compass event June 21 on Capitol Hill.
Chinese online shopping platform Temu has no procedures to comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which “all but guarantees” imports from the company violate the UFLPA, the House Select Committee on China said this week. In a new report, the committee said both Temu and Chinese online retailer Shein “rely heavily” on the de minimis exception when shipping packages to the U.S., allowing them to avoid CBP scrutiny of potential forced labor violations.
CBP and the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee, or COAC, have "several issues where the COAC and CBP have agreed to disagree," in a customs modernization proposal, said Flexport's Caroline Dale (see 2306050069), but the lengthy work to come to consensus is just the start.
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CBP hopes that the customs modernization law is passed in time to use its authorities in the reprogramming of ACE, with a goal of providing CBP and partner government agencies "with better quality data, much earlier in the supply chain, often in real time," John Leonard, deputy executive assistant commissioner in CBP's Office of Trade, said June 20.
"Activity" is "on the horizon" related to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, Lesleyanne Kessler, CBP’s deputy associate chief counsel, said at an event on June 13. Following the recent addition of new companies to the list for the first time since the list was released in June 2022 (see 2306090011), Kessler said she expects the process for an interagency task force to add companies or remove them from the list "will be moving ahead in the coming year."
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee has reintroduced a bill eliminating Chinese shippers' eligibility for de minimis, keeping the ban on China, and adding a requirement that remaining de minimis shipments include at a minimum: a description; an HTS code; a country of origin, shipper, importer; and a U.S. value. The new version also dropped language around sections 232 and 301 tariffs in the previous version.
A recently introduced bill would end Chinese and Russian shippers' eligibility for de minimis, and would order the Treasury Department to determine, within 180 days, what rates the other countries deserve for de minimis, based on both their own de minimis treatment of U.S. shipments and their threshold to collect a value-added tax, if they have one.
Once CBP submits its proposal for a new customs modernization law, National Foreign Trade Council Senior Director of International Supply Chain Policy John Pickel says, Congress will dig into how they want to shape the bill. It’s not an easy task to produce a bill with a balance between enforcement and trade facilitation, but that’s Congress’ intention, he said.
Mexico's ban on the import of goods made with forced labor went into effect three weeks ago, so if importers whose goods were detained by CBP under suspicion of forced labor wanted to re-export to Mexico, that avenue is closed, said Eduardo Sotelo Cauduro, a partner with Sanchez DeVanny, a Mexican law firm.