The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, with importers bearing the burden of proof, is the No. 1 forced labor compliance issue, panelists said, outpacing disclosure and due diligence laws in other countries around the world.
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 former Office of the U.S. Trade Representative career negotiator and a former Trump administration trade adviser say that even if the U.S. is not going to reenter into a tweaked Trans-Pacific Partnership -- as they advised in an earlier think tank piece -- the U.S. needs to take trade negotiations in Asia more seriously to not get left behind.
An author of Fighting Trade Cheats, a bill that would create a private right of action for customs fraud and hike penalties for both fraud and gross negligence, said a customs modernization package could be a vehicle for his bill to become law.
The director of CBP's trade modernization office said CBP is packaging up the discussion drafts of what it would like to see in a 21st Century Customs Framework law, and sending them to the Office of Management and Budget so that the OMB can coordinate interagency comments and clearance of the language.
The executive at CBP responsible for the two pilot programs collecting data for Section 321 and Entry Type 86 told an audience of brokers that issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking on required data submissions for de minimis shipments is "of the highest priority at CBP right now." He repeated for emphasis, "The highest priority. From the commissioner down, it has been: 'When are we going to get the NPRM?'"
The Supply Chain Agreement, one of the pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, will ask participating countries to work together to:
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.
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.
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.