President-elect Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary nominee, hedge fund CEO Scott Bessent, has talked about tariffs as a way to "escalate to de-escalate," with the goal of "getting rid of all the tariffs."

There are now 107 companies flagged by U.S. regulators for using forced labor or sourcing materials from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, with the inclusion of 29 more companies, DHS said.

Todd Owen, who served as executive assistant commissioner for field operations at CBP for about five years before retiring in 2020, argued that hundreds of millions of dollars for technology upgrades, and staffing expansions, would be more helpful to catch contraband in the small package environment than removing Chinese goods or other restrictions.

Although some trade attorneys have been worrying that a Trump administration will discourage a Republican Congress from bringing back Generalized System of Preferences program tariff breaks for developing countries, members of the House Ways and Means Committee did not endorse that point of view.

Members of the House Ways and Means Committee majority, who will lead the extension or expansion of the first Trump term income tax cuts, are expressing some hesitancy about using tariffs as a pay-for.

EU ministers this week officially adopted a ban on products made with forced labor, marking one of the final steps in a yearslong lawmaking process designed to eliminate EU imports, exports or other sales of those goods (see 2404230048 and 2403050035). The new regulations will apply about three years after publication in the Official Journal of the EU.

Trump transition team members may have already drafted an executive order hiking tariffs on Chinese imports, said Peterson Institute for International Economics fellow Mary Lovely, during a webinar moderated by former European commissioner and now PIIE fellow Cecilia Malmstrom.

With just 14 days in session scheduled for the House of Representatives before the end of the year, Ways and Means Committee members are not expressing optimism that a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program will be one of the items that gets a vote this Congress.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in its annual report to Congress, said that ending de minimis for all e-commerce is one of its top 10 recommendations, and said that if Congress passes such a law, it should provide CBP adequate resources to implement and enforce the change.

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