Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., voiced optimism during a radio interview (here) that agriculture secretary nominee Sonny Perdue would advocate for maintaining robust agricultural trade with Mexico. “The thing that we need to do on trade, in particular, is we need to have a very vocal voice in places like Mexico saying our American producers still want to trade with Mexico, and they’re interested in maintaining those long-term relationships,” she said. “And if we don’t have that from the top down, I think we’re going to have some tough times ahead in agricultural trade.” The Senate Agriculture Committee on March 30 voted to clear Perdue for a full Senate vote. Heitkamp expressed concern about the U.S.'s ability to open up agricultural trade with Japan, after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have opened that market to more U.S. food exports. She noted a recent conversation with U.S. trade representative nominee Robert Lighthizer. "He believes in doing bilaterals," she said. "But he's going to have a tough time putting agriculture on the table with Japan, which I think is the first place he's going to go."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on April 11 pushed bipartisan legislation, the International Narcotics Trafficking Emergency Response by Detecting Incoming Contraband with Technology (INTERDICT) Act, which would provide CBP with more tools and resources to detect and seize fentanyl shipped through mail and express carriers, his office said in a statement (here). Overseas labs making the synthetic opioids are taking advantage of CBP’s “limited capabilities” to screen international packages, it said. Suppliers of the drug often mislabel shipments or conceal them in legitimate goods to avoid CBP detection, the statement says. Schumer highlighted the March-introduced legislation in a speech in Schenectady, and noted that Mexico and China are major sources for fentanyl and fentanyl precursor chemicals, respectively.

Lawmakers recently introduced the following trade-related bills:

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., called for President Donald Trump to suspend current and future licenses for aircraft sales to commercial Iranian airlines until his administration comprehensively reviews their role in supporting Iran’s “illicit activity,” according to an April 10 letter (here). The U.S. should revoke authorizations and reinstate sanctions on Iranian airlines found guilty of using commercial aircraft for illicit military purposes -- including transporting troops, weapons and cash to rogue regimes and terrorist groups around the world -- until they stop such activities, the lawmakers said. Moreover, the Trump administration should prohibit U.S. companies from selling aircraft to Iran until the nation stops using commercial aircraft “to advance its terror campaign around the world,” the lawmakers said. Boeing recently confirmed it signed an agreement with Iran Aseman Airlines, which is headed by a “prominent and longtime member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the letter said.

Lawmakers recently introduced the following trade-related bills:

The border adjustment portion of the House GOP tax blueprint was the biggest concern among polled tax executives, according to the results of Miller & Chevalier Chartered’s and NFTC’s 2017 Tax Policy Forecast Survey (here). A total of 21.7 percent of responding executives said border adjustment was their most significant concern in the blueprint, while 20.9 percent said an insufficient proposed reduction of the statutory tax rate was their top concern. “This may not be surprising, considering that the border adjustment and the elimination of interest deductibility are the two proposals in the Blueprint that raise the most revenue,” the report says. “The question is whether the tax rate reduction will be large enough to make up for the tax increases resulting from these new revenue raisers.”

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conflict minerals reporting requirements set in 2014 have had overall mixed results, witnesses told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee panel on April 5. Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., during a brief interview after the hearing, said his panel will consider whether any legislative action is needed to amend the legislation that created the reporting requirements. “The SEC is limited in scope in what they can do, and all the witnesses agree that a more comprehensive approach that involves governance by the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] is going to be necessary, but we realize the limitations of the current government in the DRC,” he said. “But we’ll consider” whether legislation is needed, he said.

A bipartisan group of senators and a slew of House Democrats wrote several different letters to President Donald Trump urging trade action during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping April 6 and 7 at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The top Republican and Democrat on both the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees signed a letter (here) calling on Trump to address alleged Chinese weak intellectual property protections, “non-scientific” regulatory barriers facing U.S. agricultural exports to China, currency intervention, non-compliance with World Trade Organization obligations, commodity overcapacities and policies that pick “state champions.”

The Senate Finance Committee postponed its vote scheduled for April 6 on whether to advance U.S. trade representative nominee Robert Lighthizer for full Senate consideration, a spokeswoman for the committee’s Republican majority said, citing scheduling conflicts among senators. The committee will consider the nomination sometime after a two-week spring break that will start when senators leave Capitol Hill on April 7, the spokeswoman said.

Members of the U.S. transportation industry on April 4 told a Senate Commerce Committee panel to continue the Transportation Department’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants program, which faces elimination in fiscal year 2018. Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz and Port Newark Container Terminal CEO James Pelliccio told the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure to keep funding the program, and both touted the private sector’s contributions to the program, compared with other grants that usually require more public investment. President Donald Trump’s FY 2018 budget blueprint submitted to Congress on March 16 proposes to end the TIGER grants program (see 1703170037).