The House Select Committee on China is asking the Treasury Department to assess if "altering de minimis eligibility for textile and apparel and other high-risk items," such as not allowing these goods to enter under de minimis, would improve enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Mara Lee
Mara Lee, Senior Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. She joined the Warren Communications News staff in early 2018, after covering health policy, Midwestern Congressional delegations, and the Connecticut economy, insurance and manufacturing sectors for the Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously published newspaper (established 1674). Before arriving in Washington D.C. to cover Congress in 2005, she worked in Ohio, where she witnessed fervent presidential campaigning every four years.
The Automotive Industry Action Group, a forum for auto industry companies to collaborate on supply chain and corporate responsibility issues, is vetting service providers that say they can provide visibility deep into supply chains, as well as educating companies that may not realize how urgent it is to uncover whether any of their suppliers' suppliers have a nexus to Uyghur labor in China.
Ending most favored nation status for Chinese imports -- as advocated for by the House Select Committee on China and some other China hawks in Congress -- would increase consumer prices for laptops and smart phones by more than $100, and cause purchases of those goods to fall sharply, according to a recent study commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association.
Both Asian countries and American businesses had hoped that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework could be a step on the road to lowering tariffs, trade experts said during a webinar on the future of IPEF, but now they're wondering if there will be any economically significant effect at all from talks about trade facilitation, green transition and supply chain resilience.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai says that her agency and Congress "will need to work closely together" to address the fact that "existing rules of origin have left openings" for Chinese firms with operations outside China to avoid Section 301 tariffs and, depending where the operations occur, benefit from free trade agreements.
India and the U.S. should aim for "economically meaningful outcomes" from better customs and trade facilitation, supply chain linkages, trade in high-tech products and trade in critical minerals between the two countries, India's commerce minister and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a joint statement.
Allowing the financing companies that own leased vehicles to claim tax credits irrespective of where electric vehicles and their batteries were made, and lengthening the timeline to cut China out of battery and critical mineral supply chains, runs contrary to the Inflation Reduction Act, argued Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, and the ranking member of the committee, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
The government is considering adding seafood to its list of priority enforcement targets, joining cotton, polysilicon and tomatoes, according to testimony at a House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight hearing.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark criticized the Biden administration for not only choosing to avoid tariff liberalizing trade negotiations, but also for walking away from long-time positions on digital trade provisions. Clark, who was speaking at a press conference after the Chamber's annual State of American Business event, declined to say whether a second Donald Trump administration or another term of Joe Biden would be worse on trade.
Nineteen members of the House of Representatives, along with three Pacific territory delegates, are publicly shaming Sysco for not cutting ties with Rongcheng Haibo, a processing plant in China that the Outlaw Ocean Project reported employs Uyghur laborers transferred from Western China (see 2310100030).