India’s recent trend towards trade and investment barriers -- disregarding intellectual property rights, barring market access, closing investment sectors -- represent a troubling trend President Obama should address at next week’s U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, 35 members of the House Ways and Means Committee said in a June 20 letter to Obama and other trade-related agency heads. The meeting provides a “timely opportunity to encourage India to pursue market-based policies and reforms instead of erecting barriers that hurt U.S. exporters, investors, and workers, as well as its own citizens,” the letter said (read it here). The Obama administration should focus on reducing tariffs -- India’s are some of the highest in the world -- as well as reducing opaque, discriminatory procedures, the letter said. Such regulations include local content requirements on electronic good procurement, compulsory licenses or revoking of pharmaceutical patents, and “paltry” market access for U.S. agricultural goods, the letter said.

Congressional appropriations committees approved on June 19 a Department of Homeland Security plan to reallocate CBP funding, thereby preventing furloughs. The reprogramming authority -- which agencies must ask Congressional appropriators for, and is separate from any funding bill -- eliminates the need to furlough CBP employees for the rest of this fiscal year, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a message to employees. The approval “mitigates the challenges our workforce would have faced with furloughs,” she said. The authority does not, however, eliminate the impact of sequestration on CBP, “or change the significant cut to our budget for FY 2013,” Napolitano said. “CBP will continue a hiring freeze for non-frontline personnel, maintain limited reductions in overtime … reduce travel and conferences,” and forego agency monetary awards for the rest of the fiscal year, she said.

The House Appropriations Committee proposed a $1 billion draw from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund in the committee’s bill funding energy, water and related agencies for Fiscal Year 2013, released June 17. The fund withdrawal will be used to “help increase commerce through the nation’s ports and other waterways,” the Committee said in a statement (here). The entire bill allocates $32.1 billion, which is more than $965 million below President Obama’s budget request. The American Association of Port Authorities praised the harbor maintenance funding in the bill, even though annual revenue collected from the MHT for maintenance dredging is around $1.6 billion. The House bill amount is $110 million more than the Obama administration requested, and -- if approved -- would be the largest regular annual appropriation for navigation maintenance, AAPA said in a statement (here). “While still less than the need for full use of the Harbor Maintenance Tax, this funding amount in a tightly constrained budget is a positive step toward ensuring that the HMT is fully utilized to maintain our nation’s federal navigation channels at their constructed dimensions,” AAPA President Kurt Nagle said.

The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal year 2014 transportation spending bill, released June 18, includes a boost in federal highway spending but cuts to nearly every other section, including a $25 million decrease for the Maritime Administration, more than $700 million from the Federal Aviation Administration and no funding for high-speed rail. In a statement, Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said the bill meets fiscal constrains while maintaining funding, “making the best use of limited tax dollars by focusing investments on transportation infrastructure critical to our economy … while reducing or eliminating funding for lower-priority programs.” According to a Committee statement (here) the bill includes:

Trade leaders in the House and Senate praised June 17’s announcement that the U.S. and EU will begin trade agreement negotiations in early July, but warned the Obama administration must secure Trade Promotion Authority for any agreement to be successful. “While I am pleased the President is formally launching negotiations today, it ultimately won’t matter unless these negotiations can be concluded and enacted into law,” said Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a statement (here). “That is why it is imperative that the President show some real leadership on trade and begin working with Congress in earnest to renew [TPA].” House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., agreed. The U.S.-EU agreement should tackle tariffs, non-tariff and regulatory barriers, he said in a statement (here). “Developing Trade Promotion Authority is a vital and necessary tool to ensuring the success of these negotiations.” Democratic Ways and Means leaders also said the agreement should resolve regulatory differences (here), while Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the agreement must address EU restrictions on U.S. agriculture exports (here).

Recent trade-related bills introduced in Congress include:

More than 230 companies and business groups from across the U.S. urged lawmakers to renew the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program before its July 31 expiration, saying a lag in the program would mean $2 million a day in new import taxes, in a June 17 letter to Congress. “As you consider the upcoming legislative agenda, we urge you to make the renewal of the GSP program a priority before Congress adjourns for the August work period,” said the letter, spearheaded by the Coalition for GSP and sent to leaders on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees. (Read the letter here.) If Congress does not renew GSP before the July 31 deadline, tariffs will take effect August 1. On August 2, Congress adjourns for a month-long recess.

India’s increasingly protectionist intellectual property and market access policies threaten U.S. trade with the country, and Secretary of State John Kerry should push India’s leaders on the issue in his upcoming visit to the country, Senate Finance Committee leaders said in a June 13 letter to Kerry. The U.S.-India trade and investment relationship is “imperiled so long as India refuses to afford adequate protection of U.S. intellectual property and full market access to U.S.-made innovative products,” said the letter from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s FY 2014 funding bill in the House includes recommendations to delay a mandatory country-of-origin labeling rule and create a trusted importer program, but does not include the USDA’s proposed food importer fee. The House Appropriations Committee marked up the bill June 13. Read the complete draft bill (here).

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., plans to introduce a bill later this year to create an overarching strategic economic dialogue between the U.S. and Brazil, to increase visibility and oversight of the bilateral trade relationship, Nunes said June 12. He spoke at a Subcommittee hearing on trade and investment opportunities in Brazil, where witnesses and lawmakers said the U.S. should work to ease trade flows between the countries to tap into Brazil’s vital, ever-growing market. The country has raised its global profile in recent years, they said, securing the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics; the new World Trade Organization Director General is Brazilian, and the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, will make a state visit this October.