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.
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.
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.
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.
Sixteen state attorneys general are asking the Security and Exchange Commission to block the listing of SHEIN -- or any other foreign-owned firm -- on a U.S. stock exchange unless a "truly independent" certification can be made that the company does not export goods made with forced labor.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies expect the U.S. will get "a taste of its own medicine” when China appeals its loss over Section 232 retaliatory tariffs at the World Trade Organization, adding that China likely won't have to drop the tariffs since there is no appellate body to take that appeal.
Trade ministers from the G-20 nations reaffirmed the role of the World Trade Organization, pledged to promote resilient global value chains and said they will increase transparency of sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade within the WTO.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president for international policy said that when the trade ministers for the G-20 nations meet in India later this week, they should pledge not to hike tariffs, impose new export restraints or add digital trade barriers.