Rule Freeze May Affect Forced Labor, de Minimis Carve-Out, FSMA Recordkeeping Requirements
The White House is freezing rules that have been published, but have not taken effect, as well as proposed rulemaking and interim final rules, for 60 days from Jan. 20, so that the new administration can review the policies. The Trump administration issued a similar order in 2017 (see 1701230031), as did previous administrations.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
That means new licensing requirements for aluminum products that were set to begin Jan. 25 may not go into effect then (see 2012220033). The interim final rule published Jan. 19 that would provide for Commerce review of purchases of a wide variety of products in the telecommunications and information and communications technology and services supply chains would also seem to be frozen, since it was not to take effect until March 22, to give the department time to promulgate rules to put a Trump executive order into action (see 2101140060). The Joe Biden administration is also freezing rulemaking that has not progressed to even interim final rule stage, such as the proposed overhaul of CBP regulations on forced labor, and a proposal to carve out items under Section 301 tariffs from de minimis.
The announcement said “any substantive action by an agency ... that promulgates or is expected to lead to the promulgation of a final rule or regulation, including notices of inquiry, advance notices of proposed rulemaking, and notices of proposed rulemaking” is part of the freeze, as are agency statements that set forth regulatory policy or interpretations of a statutory or regulatory issue.
The memo also suggests that agencies consider opening a 30-day comment period on the frozen rules “to allow interested parties to provide comments about issues of fact, law, and policy raised by those rules, and consider pending petitions for reconsideration involving such rules.”
A proposed rule on record-keeping that is part of implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act, (see 2009220041), is also affected by the freeze. Rules that are subject to a freeze won't necessarily fail to go forward ultimately. The Food Safety Modernization Act, for instance, is a cause dear to the new House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. However, some midnight regulations that affect importers, such as changes to the steel and aluminum exclusions process (see 2012100047), are not touched by this, because they already took effect.