Members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced the Safeguarding American Value-Added Exports (SAVE) Act, which will amend the Agriculture Trade Act of 1978 to "include and define a list of common names for ag commodities, food products, and terms used in marketing and packaging of products," Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., announced in a press release last week. In addition, SAVE also will direct the secretary of agriculture and the U.S. trade representative to negotiate with "our foreign trading partners to defend the right to use common names for ag commodities in those same foreign markets," the press release said.
Noah Garfinkel
Noah Garfinkel, Assistant Editor, is a reporter for International Trade Today. Noah joined Warren Communication News in early 2023 covering customs, the Federal Maritime Commission and export controls. Noah’s background is in breaking news, reporting and research. Noah most recently worked for a year with Axios as a part of a fellowship program. Noah is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in History.
CBP has updated the ACE Cargo Release CBP and Trade Automated Interface Requirements (CATAIR) to allow port of entry changes via the ACE Cargo Release Update transaction using the update action code, CBP announced May 22. The port of entry may be corrected after the cargo arrives and the entry is released, the CBP said. Users will not need to request an entry cancellation and resubmit to change a port of entry, the agency said.
Two ocean carriers recently paid a combined total of $2.65 million in civil penalties, the Federal Maritime Commission announced May 18. The penalties, assessed to Ocean Network Express Ptd. Ltd. (ONE) and Wan Hai Lines, Ltd., were paid to “resolve allegations of misconduct," the FMC said.
CBP's upcoming regulatory changes around de minimis shipments will combine the best of the Section 321 data pilot and the best of the entry type 86 test, adding together "clearance speed of the entry type 86," CBP's E-Commerce and Small Business Branch Chief Christine Hogue said on a May 18 webinar discussion hosted by the World Trade Center Miami.
Products tainted by Uyghur forced labor include a "vast array" of agricultural products, raw materials and manufactured goods and are not just limited to the few industries CBP has specifically targeted, according to a report from Sheffield Hallam University released May 15. While tomatoes, cotton and polysilicon do have a large market share of goods produced through forced labor, China's extensive production of raw materials, agricultural products, and manufacturing products means that many industries have some sort of tie to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
Former chief agricultural negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Gregg Doud called for the use of the new enforcement mechanism in the USMCA during a House Agriculture Committee hearing May 11.
The Federal Maritime Commission on May 11 alerted industry that several of its applications are experiencing issues with email notifications. The affected applications are Form 1, Form 18, OTI Renewals, Form 65 Renewals, eMonitoring, eAgreements and BCL Fileroom, it said. The FMC Office of Information Technology is troubleshooting.
Federal agencies led by the DHS' Homeland Security Investigations unit carried out a court-authorized search on May 8 of a JinkoSloar plant in Jacksonville, Florida, an FBI spokesperson confirmed to International Trade Today.
The Federal Maritime Commission hired John Crews as the first director of its Bureau of Enforcement, Investigations and Compliance, the commission said May 8. He will “supervise and coordinate the personnel and activities” of the FMC enforcement program's three offices that were consolidated to form BEIC.
The American Cotton Shippers Association asked the Federal Maritime Commission to uphold a recent summary decision that ordered carriers to stop adopting, maintaining and enforcing regulations or practices that "limit the ability of a motor carrier to select the chassis provider." In an amicus brief filed to the FMC May 8, ACSA said it supports the decision because agreements between ocean carriers and non-party Intermodal Equipment Providers (IEPs) place limits on the “choice in chassis provisioning for U.S. cotton exporters, thereby causing delays in the movement of cotton, creating avoidably inefficiencies, imposing needless costs, and ultimately undermining the competitiveness of U.S. cotton shipments in the global marketplace."