Amazon is calling for legislation to allow CBP to share information about suspected counterfeiters with platforms and logistics companies, providing examples of how such information sharing worked to stop counterfeiters. In a just-published policy paper, Amazon said it received a tip from CBP about Champion-branded earbud cases, and "immediately quarantined the counterfeiter’s additional inventory in our fulfillment network and terminated their accounts." The tip led to HanesBrands bringing a civil lawsuit against 13 counterfeiters.

Farmers who produce several sorts of commodities continue to regret the U.S. retreat from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and want the administration to prioritize opening markets for their goods in Southeast Asia, according to a Farmers for Free Trade panel held virtually.

Tough comparisons with August 2020, the fifth full month of COVID-19 lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, were evident in the double-digit year-over-year declines in August imports of TVs, smartphones and laptops and tablets, according to Census Bureau data accessed Oct. 11 through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal.

Retail imports remain high, but there’s no telling how much the congestion at U.S. ports is denting the volume of incoming goods, the National Retail Federation reported Oct. 7. “The cargo is there for larger gains at several ports but congestion issues are impacting fluid operations,” said Jonathan Gold, NRF vice president-supply chain and customs policy. “Ships will eventually get unloaded but the pressure is on for everyone to work together to get the containers out as quickly as possible.” U.S. ports handled 2.27 million 20-foot cargo containers or their equivalents in August, NRF said. That was up 3.5% from July and 7.8% higher than a year earlier and tied March as the second-busiest month since NRF began tracking imports in 2002. The congestion and disruption come in the middle of the peak season for shipping “when retailers stock up on holiday merchandise each year, but many retailers began bringing in holiday goods this summer to be sure sufficient inventory will be available.”

The Coalition for a Prosperous America wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, suggesting that tariff rate quotas on European aluminum should be what replaces the 10% tariff on aluminum from the European Union. "We cannot return to the unhealthy belief that ad hoc anti-dumping or countervailing duties are sufficient for these vital sectors. Managing import penetration in aluminum, in particular, remains vital," the group wrote.

Costco has chartered three “ocean vessels” for the next year to transport containers between Asia and North America, “and we've leased several thousand containers for use on these ships,” Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said on a call Sept. 23 to discuss the results of fiscal Q4 ended Aug. 29. “Every ship can carry 800 to 1,000 containers at a time and we'll make approximately 10 deliveries during the course of the next year.” Costco's electronics sales in the quarter were "very good," but up against a tough comparison with a year earlier when "we had really outsized sales" amid COBID-19 stay-at-home orders, Galanti said.

American Apparel and Footwear Association CEO Steve Lamar told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that freight rates and delays are a crisis, and wrote, "We implore you ... to provide the kind of immediate and short-term relief that companies need today to survive this existential threat. We urge you to retroactively reinstate the expired Section 301 tariff exclusions. Further, we urge you to suspend the application of all Section 301 tariffs going forward. Combined, these actions would immediately make millions of dollars available to companies that are hardest hit by the shipping crisis."

Trade professionals and a trade scholar, talking on a panel that compared the Trump and Biden administrations' trade policies, said that not as much has changed on trade as might have been expected. Christine McDaniel, an economist at George Mason University, said she doesn't expect any of the Section 301 tariffs or the steel and aluminum tariffs to be lifted before the end of 2021. "I haven’t seen any indication they’re going to pull back on the tariffs," she said during a seminar at the Virginia Small Business Development Center on Sept. 21. "I’ve heard people say that the Trump trade policy is just being continued by the Biden administration, minus the rhetoric. You can make the argument for that."

July laptop and tablet imports to the U.S. showed sustained resilience despite tough comparisons with 2020, when most homes were hunkered down in their fourth full month of COVID-19 lockdowns, according to Census Bureau data accessed Sept. 13 through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal. But smartphone imports trended in the opposite direction, with shipments declining by double digits from the two most important source countries, China and Vietnam.

The National Association of Manufacturers CEO is calling on the Biden administration to "act as quickly as possible to finalize and publicize [its China] strategy. Such a clear, robust strategy on China, including U.S.-China trade, would be critical in bolstering manufacturers’ efforts to retain and hire American workers, invest in domestic operations and adjust supply chains, and providing meaningful opportunities for manufacturers to seek targeted relief from broad application of Section 301 tariffs."