House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said changing the terms of "de minimis is something that we are going to have a lot of fruitful discussions [on], we are doing that with the Senate. It's a very bipartisan concern."
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.
Last month, a bipartisan proposal in the House of Representatives called for Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum to be dropped unless Congress approved them within 75 days of the bill's enactment, and also restricted presidents' ability to hike tariffs under the guise of national security going forward.
A former Senate Finance Committee chairman when Republicans were in the majority, a pro-trade Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, and that committee's trade subcommittee leaders all agree -- if a returned President Donald Trump imposed a global 10% tariff by executive order, Congress likely would step in to undo it.
EU and U.S. negotiators will not be reaching a grand bargain on fighting overcapacity in steelmaking and new trade rules to privilege greener steel in six weeks, predicted a source that gets updates about the negotiations. "I don’t think either side has felt progress is really being made," the source said.
A think tank with roots in libertarianism that now supports a carbon tax warned that members of Congress who want to pass a carbon border adjustment tax without a domestic carbon tax face more than just litigation at the World Trade Organization.
Two members of the House of Representatives asked the House Ways and Means Committee to renew the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, and several others also advocated for trade policies on the day that the committee welcomed other members to advocate for their priorities.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, with importers bearing the burden of proof, is the No. 1 forced labor compliance issue, panelists said, outpacing disclosure and due diligence laws in other countries around the world.
A former Office of the U.S. Trade Representative career negotiator and a former Trump administration trade adviser say that even if the U.S. is not going to reenter into a tweaked Trans-Pacific Partnership -- as they advised in an earlier think tank piece -- the U.S. needs to take trade negotiations in Asia more seriously to not get left behind.
An author of Fighting Trade Cheats, a bill that would create a private right of action for customs fraud and hike penalties for both fraud and gross negligence, said a customs modernization package could be a vehicle for his bill to become law.
The executive at CBP responsible for the two pilot programs collecting data for Section 321 and Entry Type 86 told an audience of brokers that issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking on required data submissions for de minimis shipments is "of the highest priority at CBP right now." He repeated for emphasis, "The highest priority. From the commissioner down, it has been: 'When are we going to get the NPRM?'"