House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has appointed Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., to chair the House Select Committee on China when its current chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., leaves Congress next month, Moolenaar and the speaker’s office announced March 25.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 43-0 on March 20 to approve a bill that would add Chinese drone company Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI) to the FCC's Covered List, thereby prohibiting DJI technology from operating on U.S. communications infrastructure. The move came eight days after the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology took similar action (see 2403140013).

The Ocean Shipping Reform Implementation Act, which gives the Federal Maritime Commission power to investigate allegations against shipping exchanges, passed the House March 21 by a vote of 393-24. It also directs the FMC to establish standards for price indexes published by shipping exchanges, such as the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.

The Senate passed a resolution that could undo the USDA's approval of imported Paraguayan beef, if the House also votes to end these imports by a veto-proof margin.

House Select Committee on China Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., asked Homeland Security Investigations to look into whether a surge in drone imports from Malaysia is due to transshipment from China, and asked the administration to hike tariffs on Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles, either by increasing Section 301 tariffs on the product, by initiating an antidumping/countervailing duty investigation, and/or opening a Section 232 investigation.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., asked the leaders of luxury apparel company Loro Piana to defend its practices in sourcing vicuña wool in Peru.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to mark up a bill on March 20 that would direct the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to undertake a study on whether routers and modems designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by Chinese firms, or firms from other adversary countries, are a risk to national security.

Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., claimed victory after the Commerce Department announced it isn't reducing antidumping duties on Vietnamese catfish from $2.39/kg to $0.14/kg (see 2403130061). They and other Southern Republicans had decried the preliminary decision earlier this year (see 2401220029). They said that reduction in duties ignored more than 20 years of precedent in the case, and would "also set a troubling precedent for the approximately 250 [non-market economy] proceedings involving communist governments before the Commerce Department."

A House member who is running for the Senate in Indiana asked the Commerce Department to initiate an investigation on the import of electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries made anywhere in the world.

More than a quarter of the U.S. Senate asked the U.S. trade representative to push back against the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation, saying the approach presents "significant compliance issues due to its stringency and ambiguity. One specific concern is the traceability requirement. The EUDR imposes a geolocation traceability requirement that mandates sourcing to the individual plot of land for every shipment of timber product to the EU. In the U.S., 42 percent of the wood fiber used by pulp and paper mills comes from wood chips, forest residuals, and sawmill manufacturing residues -- wood sources that cannot be traced back to an individual forest plot."