The Senate Finance Committee's top Republican, along with seven of his colleagues, accused Office of the U.S. Trade Representative officials of misleading congressional staff on what they would be negotiating on digital trade at the World Trade Organization. "As recently as this weekend, USTR officials told congressional staff that they had not abandoned support for negotiating the free data flow commitments at issue," Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and his colleagues wrote Oct. 26.
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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.
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 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to amend its regulations that prevent introduction of African swine fever so that they also apply to importation of live dogs for resale. The proposed rule would mostly adopt, but with slightly different microchip requirements, a federal order issued in 2021 that set permit, microchip, documentation and other import requirements for imported dogs of less than 6 months of age that will be transferred to another person for more than de minimis consideration (this includes such transactions as retail sale, wholesale and fee-based adoption). Comments on the proposed rule are due Nov. 27.
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Two members of the trade community expressed concern about recommendations adopted on de minimis by the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee at the COAC meeting on Sept. 20. The working group made eight recommendations at the COAC meeting after only having met for the first time on Aug. 22 (see 2309120060), and the two officials cited both the pace of the recommendations, as well as the make up of the group that wrote them.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said changing the terms of "de minimis is something that we are going to have a lot of fruitful discussions [on], we are doing that with the Senate. It's a very bipartisan concern."
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CBP posted the following documents ahead of the Sept. 20 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting: