The Agriculture Trade Caucus asked the administration to negotiate market-access trade agreements, saying it needs "to proactively engage and secure enforceable, high-standard agreements with our trading partners to ensure our farmers and ranchers can compete globally on a level playing field."
Reps. Max Miller, R-Ohio, and Angie Craig, D-Minn., led 20 other House members on a letter to administration officials expressing concern that a lack of a strategy to open markets through free trade agreements is leading to a trade deficit in agriculture. The authors noted that the U.S. had an agricultural trade surplus for about 60 years, until recently.
New regulations that the Commerce Department is considering for commercial gun export licenses would “devastate” the American firearms industry by imposing overly burdensome requirements, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and 11 other Republican senators told the agency.
The Biden administration is misusing its Latin America sanctions authorities by targeting U.S. partners and ignoring misbehavior by less friendly countries, eight Republican senators told President Joe Biden.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and four other members of the congressionally mandated National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology visited Indiana on Feb. 21 to hold fact-finding meetings at Indiana University Indianapolis, Purdue University, drugmaker Eli Lilly and seed design company Inari, Young said on Feb. 23. The commission is developing recommendations to strengthen U.S. leadership in biotechnology, and it plans to include them in a report to Congress in December (see 2402020043).
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked President Joe Biden in a Feb. 20 letter to clarify whether his recent executive order on West Bank sanctions applies to some or all of Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Cotton requested a response by Feb. 27. The White House had no immediate comment. The executive order, which Biden signed Feb. 1, allows the U.S. to sanction "foreign persons" responsible for an increase in violence in the West Bank (see 2402010053).
Five members of the House Select Committee on China are visiting Taiwan Feb. 22-24 to show support for the democratic country and discuss trade and investment, regional security and other issues with senior Taiwanese leaders and members of civil society, the committee said.
The Biden administration should promote de-escalation of the Israel-Hamas war by prioritizing defensive weapons systems over offensive ones when it makes its next major weapons transfer to Israel, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a Feb. 21 letter to President Joe Biden.
A bipartisan group of 11 House members urged the Biden administration on Feb. 16 to impose Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on seven Chinese companies for allegedly using Uyghur forced labor to provide seafood to U.S. markets.
The House of Representatives voted 389-32 on Feb. 14 to pass a bill that would expand sanctions on Syria's Bashar Assad regime.