Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote to President Joe Biden saying that he should "take bold, aggressive action and to permanently ban" electric vehicles "produced by Chinese companies or whatever subsidiaries they establish to conceal their origins."
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.
A recent bill from House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, would change the drawback statute so that items that have a Harmonized Tariff Schedule description beginning with "other" no longer would be ineligible for unused substitution drawback, drawback expert Dave Corn said.
A new bill from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican and a Democratic member would renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade preference program for 16 years, offer more flexibility on country eligibility reviews, and soften the high-income graduation rules.
Lori Wallach, head of Rethink Trade and a longtime free-trade skeptic, said the House Ways and Means Committee plans to vote next week on a new bill to restrict de minimis, which wouldn't allow goods subject to Section 301 tariffs to enter through the de minimis pathway. The Section 301 tariffs covered roughly two-thirds of Chinese exports at the time the last round was imposed, but trade flows have shifted as a result of the tariffs, as imports of those tariff lines from China fell by 13%, according to the International Trade Commission.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she hopes "we can announce the result of [the Section 301] review soon," though she later declined to say whether that would be when she appears next week before the House and Senate committees that oversee her office.
A bill that directs the Biden administration to promulgate rules within 18 months to require data submissions for de minimis importers was introduced April 9 by Sens. Mike Braun, R-Ind., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., called the Ensure Accountability in De Minimis Act.
Work gloves manufactured by Shanghai Select Products Company, and its subsidiaries Select (Nantong) Safety Products Co. Limited and Select Protective Technology (HK) Limited, cannot enter the U.S. because CBP says it has information that reasonably indicates the gloves were made with convict labor.
A bill requiring a study on gender bias and regressive effects of the U.S. tariff system was introduced April 10, and has been endorsed by the New Democrat Coalition Trade Task Force, which is led by one of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Texas.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told an audience of domestic textile producers that de minimis is based on a "false premise" that low value means low risk, and said that is not the case.
DHS announced that more companies in what it called "the high-priority textile sector" should be added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act's Entity List, joining the 10 already on that list -- just one item in what it's calling "a new comprehensive enforcement action plan" for textiles.