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.
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 new Silverado Policy Accelerator report says not enough attention has been paid to China's production of mature or legacy semiconductors -- a category the paper calls "foundational" -- and the authors say ceding this market to China "would have significant national and economic security implications."
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who traveled to China with the Senate majority leader and other senators in mid-October, said what he saw there reinforced his desire to pass what he calls a "foreign pollution fee," a tariff on imports that are more carbon intensive than domestic production. He told International Trade Today that he'll introduce the bill "we think later this month, or maybe early next month."
When the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization said the U.S. was no longer arguing that data localization is a violation of trade rules, and is no longer pushing for open data flows, blowback in the U.S. was immediate, and not just from industry interests who want the right to protect source codes and want the ability to transfer data across borders freely.
Mexico's Economy Secretariat announced last week that it resolved issues at Mas Air, a cargo airline in Mexico City, after it received a labor complaint from the U.S. government in late August (see 2308310029).
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.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance announced it has filed a formal allegation with CBP that shrimp harvested in Argentina and processed in China by Qingdao Yize should be barred from entry into the U.S. because, it argues, Uyghur workers have been transferred to processing plants in Shandong province.
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.