At a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing, Democrats talked up their legislative proposals -- two bipartisan, two not -- as answers to confronting China's trade agenda, and expressed skepticism of witnesses' advocacy for ending permanent normal trade relations with China, while some Republicans expressed interest in that approach, and one seemed cautious.
CBP is looking to expand the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) to include e-commerce, agency officials said at the 2023 Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit on April 18. As part of that effort, CBP has begun to have conversations with a subsection of members of the Section 321 data pilot to better understand e-commerce and how it compares with a traditional supply chain, Bryant Van Buskirk, director of CBP's Los Angeles CTPAT Office, said.
When most people think of counterfeits in the U.S., they think of luxury fashion -- purses and watches -- but CBP also is concerned about safety issues from counterfeit medicines, sunscreen, baby formula and poorly made electronics whose lithium-ion batteries can cause fires.
Audience members looking for answers on how to navigate the rebuttable presumption of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act got no answers from a panel on human rights and "responsible business conduct," though they were told that if Sheffield Hallam University researchers can uncover links to forced labor in supply chains, it's not that hard for businesses to do the same.
Almost half of de minimis shipments last year were covered either by the Type 86 entry test or the Section 321 data pilot program, CBP said, but that doesn't mean that the government has a good grasp on what merchandise is entering in small packages.
A staff report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission says that Congress should consider that "current customs and tariff levels disproportionately benefit Chinese e-commerce firms," and that packages sent to U.S. consumers "are frequently not inspected. Those that are inspected are often subject to rudimentary visual checks without the technology or screening to trace fabric origin and other violations."
Despite the success of its Section 321 data pilot, which has taught CBP lessons on the types of data on de minimis shipments it may find helpful and reduced hiccups for industry participants providing the additional data, CBP still has “quite a bit we can learn,” CBP’s Christopher Mabelitini said during a webinar April 12. In addition to expanding the number of participants covered by the pilot, CBP is looking to increase the universe of data and transactions.
The chair and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, along with the lead sponsors of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, told Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Silvers that they're concerned about the implementation of UFLPA, and that they intend to call Silvers to testify at a hearing in the near future, along with "a panel of experts on trade, labor trafficking, and supply chain mapping."
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CBP has started to shift its enforcement focus to Type 86 entries as use of the relatively new entry type for de minimis shipments grows and the agency sees a "large percentage of violations" related to use of the entry type, CBP's James Moore said during an April 5 webinar hosted by the agency.