House, Senate Spending Bills Diverge on CBP, Trade Divisions in Commerce
House and Senate appropriators have disagreements on how much to spend on CBP and trade missions at the Commerce Department. The House of Representative passed spending bills during the summer, and the same bills have passed out of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, but have not gotten votes on the floor. Any differences will have to be ironed out in a conference committee.
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The House would like to spend an additional $20 million on port of entry technology and $30 million on trade enforcement technology enhancements at CBP. It also wants to add 1,200 CBP officers, 406 mission support personnel and 240 agricultural specialists. Overall, the House budget for CBP is $13.8 billion. The Senate's budget is $18.1 billion, which would include a border wall, 119 new CBP officers and replacing older non-intrusive inspection equipment.
In the report accompanying the spending bill, the Appropriations Committee directed CBP to brief the staff within 90 days of the bill's passage "on how the agency addresses mislabeling and transshipment to avoid tariffs and duties on such imports as synthetic turf, to include relabeling containers through intermediate destinations to hide the true origin of the products."
For the Department of Commerce, both committees said Commerce needs to continue to provide quarterly reports on Section 232 exclusions, including how many requests have been received, approved and denied, and how much staffing is dedicated to the effort.
Senate appropriators slated $15.2 billion for the Commerce Department, including $521 million for the International Trade Administration, a $26 million increase over the current fiscal year. The committee says the money should be used to establish a dedicated anti-circumvention and duty evasion enforcement unit. The House passed a spending bill with $16.4 billion for the Commerce Department.
In the Senate report accompanying its bill, the committee directed the Commerce Department "to immediately publish the [non-classified or proprietary information] portions of the report resulting from the Section 232 investigation into the imports of motor vehicle and automotive parts." The committee said it was reminding the administration that the law requires that the report be published in the Federal Register at the same time it's transmitted to the president.