For all the talk of a climate club, where trade among countries inside the club is privileged, panelists at the Niskanen Center said the failure of the U.S. and the EU to reach an agreement on green steel in two years of talking shows how far off that possibility is.
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 House subcommittee hearing on the government's implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act zoomed in on de minimis shipments, low incidence of cotton isotopic testing and the slow pace of adding businesses to the UFLPA Entity List, which captures companies that accept labor transfers outside of Xinjiang.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., the lead sponsor of the Customs Business Fairness Act, said that although the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill to which it has been attached (see 2309060049) has not come out of committee, he still thinks language protecting customs brokers when their clients declare bankruptcy could get attached to funding bills in coming months.
Of more than 5,000 shipments stopped by CBP under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, CBP has finished its analysis on about 4,600. And for nearly half, or 47%, importers were able to prove there was no link to Xinjiang in their supply chains, said Brian Hoxie, director of CBP's forced labor division.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is one of the most powerful laws, "in what it's been able to achieve in such a short time," said Howard Mendelsohn, chief client officer for Kharon, a risk intelligence service provider. It was implemented so quickly that almost $2 billion worth of imports has been detained, at least temporarily.
Norway, one of the major suppliers of electric vehicle battery minerals to the U.S., hasn't gotten any encouragement from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative when its representatives have asked to negotiate a critical minerals agreement.
Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., one of the less hawkish members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, bemoaned the fact that the original title of the committee, which talked about strategic competition, has been forgotten.
The EU's top trade official, Valdis Dombrovskis, said EU and U.S. negotiators haven't given up on their Oct. 31 deadline to address both non-market overcapacity in steel and aluminum and ways to privilege trade in cleaner metals.
A nonprofit organization that fights illicit networks that threaten global peace and security, C4ADS, is recommending that the Department of Homeland Security’s interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force should place Xinjiang Nonferrous Metal Industry Group and its subsidiaries on the UFLPA entity list, as the group laid out evidence that the mines use labor transfers of Turkic minorities in Xinjiang province.
Panelists and a senior administrative official acknowledged that the Inflation Reduction Act agitated Japanese, South Korean and European allies who saw its tax provisions as protectionist, but the politics made it the only way to ramp up U.S. climate ambition, several said.