Inform Consumers Out of NDAA, Attention Given to SIMP in Bill
The House-Senate compromise defense bill does not include the Inform Consumers Act, an amendment that was part of the Senate bill, which would have required that high-volume sellers online be identified and reachable. Trade groups that represent intellectual property rights holders had hoped that the bill would become law this year since it had been part of a different House package and was in the Senate bill (see 2210260087).
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The bill, the text of which was released Dec. 6, does touch on trade in a couple of areas, however. It authorizes $20 million in annual appropriations to CBP for forced labor enforcement for fiscal years 2023 through 2027. It directs the Commerce Department, in coordination with CBP, to develop a strategy "to improve the quality and verifiability of already collected Seafood Import Monitoring Program message set data elements in the Automated Commercial Environment system" within six months of the bill's passage.
It said CBP should prioritize the use of checkboxes, dropdown menus, or radio buttons and other enumerated data types.
It also directs Commerce to audit supporting records on the species subject to SIMP, "to support statistically robust conclusions that the samples audited are representative of all seafood imports covered by the Seafood Import Monitoring Act." Those audits are to start within a year. It directs Commerce to add capacity to its Marine Forensics Laboratory, so that it can deploy "rapid, and follow-up, analysis of field-based tests focused on identifying Seafood Import Monitoring Program species, and prioritizing such species at high risk of illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing and seafood fraud."
Also, one year after the bill's passage, SIMP cannot allow aggregate harvest reporting for Northern red snapper.
The bill says that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should focus on vessels from countries that engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing or that have forced labor or human trafficking in their seafood supply chains. NOAA should consult the State Department's and Labor Department's reports on trafficking in persons and list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor, the bill says.
Commerce will need to submit an annual report on its "efforts to prevent the importation of seafood harvested through illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing, particularly with respect to seafood harvested, produced, processed, or manufactured by forced labor."
These reports are to track the volume and value of the seafood species imported in the previous fiscal year; the enforcement priorities under SIMP; the percentage of imports subject to SIMP that were selected for inspection or audit; the number and types of non-compliance with SIMP requirements; the number of violations of state or federal law discovered by SIMP, and which species were most common among the violations; and additional tools needed to improve the efficacy of SIMP.
Other trade-related amendments that made it into the package include a "sense of Congress" section which calls on the administration to help Ecuador "improve efficiency and transparency in customs administration, including through support for the Government of Ecuador's ongoing efforts to digitize its customs process and accept electronic documents required for the import, export, and transit of goods under specific international standards, as well as related training to expedite customs, security, efficiency, and competitiveness." It also calls on the U.S. to support Ecuador's efforts to lower its own trade barriers.
There also is a "sense of Congress" non-binding resolution in the NDAA that it's in America's strategic and diplomatic interests to expand economic agreements with Taiwan and develop legal templates to support a possible future trade agreement.