Companies based in China’s Xinjiang province recently signed deals with companies located elsewhere in China to export Xinjiang-origin food products that are made with forced labor, said Kharon, a risk data and risk management software company, in an alert Nov. 21. Chinese news reports coming out of an expo held in Xinjiang’s capital in September indicate Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture Co., Ltd., a fish farming and processing business that has participated in so-called “poverty alleviation programs,” an indicator of forced labor, signed an agreement with Dalian Rich Enterprise Group “intended to substantially increase international distribution of Xinjiang salmon,” Kharon said.
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The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports have been fruitless, and antidumping and countervailing duty laws also are inadequate to counter the wide variety of abuses from China -- industrial espionage, forced technology transfer, discrimination against foreign sales in China, as well as enormous subsidies. "It is time for the U.S. government, ideally working with allies, to craft and implement a new set of trade defense instruments," ITIF Founder Robert Atkinson wrote in a white paper released Nov. 21.
CBP's Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) will next meet Dec. 7 in College Park, Maryland, CBP said in a notice. Comments are due in writing by Dec. 2.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that if China has not complied with its World Trade Organization accession provisions, Congress should pass a law "to immediately suspend China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations" treatment, which would mean that Chinese imports would face higher base tariffs than from nearly all other countries. Then Congress should assess what conditions it would require to renew Chinese imports' eligibility for Most Favored Nation Tariffs, the commission said in its annual report, released Nov. 15.
CBP targeted 398 entries worth over $129.8 million for suspected use of forced labor in October 2022, including goods subject to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and withhold release orders, the agency said in its most recent operational update. That’s again down from the previous month (see 2210240024). CBP also seized nearly 1,174 shipments that contained counterfeit goods valued at more than $302 million in October, and completed 12 audits that identified $2,000 in duties and fees owed to the U.S. government for goods that had been improperly declared, the agency said.
NEW YORK -- At the U.S. Fashion Industry Association trade conference, the group's Washington counsel said that he believes there's a high likelihood that the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill will be passed before Congress goes home in December. USFIA President Julia Hughes added that because some of the members who are retiring are pro-trade, and they recognize that sentiment is waning in Congress, "that's gonna be an impetus to do something during the lame duck. Whether they're successful or not, that's not clear yet."
A recent report by Reuters, which detailed how CBP detained 1,053 shipments related to solar panels over four months ended Oct. 25, drew an angry response from China and a warning from a customs lawyer whose firm is helping companies deal with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which took effect June 21 (see 2206210022).