Vice President Kamala Harris talked about critical minerals with Indonesia's president and resilient supply chains with him and the president of the Philippines and prime minister of Japan during meetings in Jakarta this week on the sidelines of the biannual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN Summit.
A recent Congressional Research Service report on U.S.-Mexican trade relations noted that members of Congress have varying views on USMCA, the trade deal that has integrated North American supply chains, particularly in the auto industry.
The Customs Business Fairness Act, a change to bankruptcy law that protects customs brokers, was in effect in 2021, but only as a temporary measure. Its proponents failed to pass a permanent change in 2022. The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America has made a significant advance in the more than 20-year fight to make it so that the money that brokers' clients give them to send to CBP to pay tariffs is not subject to clawback after a bankruptcy filing. The clawback provisions are there so that company insiders don't strip a company of assets through bonuses or other special financial treatment to preferred vendors in the last three months before a filing.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending 77 COVID-19-related tariff exclusions as well as the 352 Section 301 exclusions that were restored in March 2022. Both sets of exclusions, which were to expire at the end of September, will last through Dec. 31.
Allegations that Diesel Canada, Hugo Boss Canada and Walmart Canada purchase garments that were made in part with Uyghur forced labor -- complaints that rely on Australian Strategic Policy Institute reporting in 2020 and Sheffield Hallam University reports -- will progress to a fact-finding investigation after the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) found that the companies' responses weren't satisfactory.
China exports squid and tuna to the U.S. from its distant water fishing fleet, which "is characterized by numerous reported incidents of forced labor. The majority of the crew on board the vessels in this fleet are migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, who are particularly vulnerable to forced labor," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a report to Congress sent last week. This was the first time that the report on illegal fishing, which comes out every two years, covered forced labor.
Canada is choosing to call for a binational panel to determine whether the countervailing duty order on its softwood lumber exports is fair, but is challenging the antidumping order at the Court of International Trade.
Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters in China that she didn't solve any specific business problems during her visit -- nor did she expect to -- and defended the new working group she announced.
Market and geopolitical risk analysts said everything has gone wrong, undermining supply chain reliability over the last several years, and businesses are creating redundancy but are still anxious about the additional costs that entails.