The House overwhelmingly passed a three-month extension for highway and other infrastructure funding on July 29, hours before departing the Capitol for a five-week, August recess. The legislation, HR-3236 (here), is set for a Senate vote on July 30, and the measure will need 60 votes in favor, said a spokesman for Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. The House previously passed and sent to the Senate a five-month extension. Senators will first vote on that chamber’s six-year infrastructure funding bill, which contains the Port Performance Act and reauthorization for the Export-Import Bank. House leadership in recent days vowed to head to recess without considering the long-term Senate legislation (see 1507280017). The highway and infrastructure funding due for the three-month extension is still scheduled to expire at midnight July 31.
The top two officials on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged the State Department on July 29 to provide a briefing on the “factual basis” of the Malaysian and Cuban upgrades in the agency’s 2015 trafficking report. The upgrades to Tier 2 on the trafficking scale has caused uproar among trade critics and human rights advocates (see 1507270031). Many lawmakers, particularly Democrats, have called the Malaysia decision politically-motivated (see 1507200004). That upgrade removes an obstacle to closing Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations with all 12 parties. The 2015 Trade Promotion Authority law, signed by President Barack Obama in late June, bars the U.S. from using expedited mechanisms in passing free trade agreements deals with Tier 3 countries. “We recognize that U.S. policy and engagement on trafficking does not exist in a vacuum, and we appreciate the many varied and nuanced trade-offs that are necessary between competing policy issues,” said Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and ranking member Ben Cardin, D-Md. (here). “We also believe that it is critical that the impartial reliability of the [Trafficking in Persons] Report be safeguarded and maintained if it is to have utility on this critical issue in the future.” Lawmakers had previously planned to include a provision in a final Customs Reauthorization bill to supersede the TPA language (see 1507070066).
Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, floated an amendment in recent days on the Senate’s six-year highway and transportation funding legislation to repeal country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for meat products. That measure is one of nearly 300 amendments filed on the legislation, HR-22. The Senate is set to vote to approve that underlying legislation on July 30, but COOL repeal likely won’t get a vote before then. In filing the amendment, Roberts said Congress must face the urgent need to stave off Canadian and Mexican retaliatory tariffs. "Whether you support or oppose COOL, the fact is retaliation is coming," said Roberts (here). “We can continue to discuss voluntary labeling programs similar to those already in the marketplace – once COOL is repealed.” Senate Agriculture ranking member Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., introduced the voluntary alternative on July 23 (see 1507240019), the same day Roberts floated the amendment. Local U.S. agriculture producers and unions recently urged lawmakers to keep the complete COOL regime in place (see 1507280038). The U.S. contested Canadian damage claims in June, and the WTO adjudication process continues to unfold (see 1506190023).
House and Senate trade leaders have made “significant progress” over recent weeks on Customs Reauthorization negotiations, said House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a July 29 statement (here). “Work has taken place to resolve the differences between the two chambers’ bills,” said Ryan. “I expect this will allow us to move to a formal conference committee soon after Congress returns from this district work period.” Ryan’s comments echo those made by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., at the outset of the week (see 1507280025). House lawmakers departed Capitol Hill on July 30 without formally launching legislative conference for Customs Reauthorization. The Senate did so in late June. Pre-conference negotiations have been underway to tackle the range of differences in the House and Senate bills, aides have said (see 1507160059). Lawmakers and trade associations, including the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America, recently outlined respective priorities for the final legislation (see 1507290016 and 1507290023).
A voluntary country-of-origin food labeling law would receive scant support from U.S. industry and ultimately put consumers and U.S. agriculture producers at risk, said more than a hundred local food associations, unions and other advocacy groups on July 28. The organizations pushed Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., to keep the current COOL laws in place, despite the looming threat of World Trade Organization-sanctioned retaliation against U.S. exports.
A final Customs Reauthorization bill should include process reform for the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, said the American Apparel and Footwear Association in a recent letter to trade leaders on Capitol Hill (here). The Senate tacked MTB process reform onto its Customs Reauthorization legislation (see 1504230001), but it's unclear whether the House will support that language. Many lawmakers, largely Republicans, are concerned specific MTB tariff suspensions qualify as earmarks. MTB is one of many policy areas set for consideration in an upcoming legislative conference for customs (see 1507070066). AAFA President Juanita Duggan further pressed leaders of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees to ensure customs conference includes corrections for tariff errors made in the preference package that passed in late June (see 1507210020). Duggan also called on lawmakers to remove a requirement that re-imported goods identify original manufacturers and to clarify that comingling rules for imports include goods “subject to minor alterations abroad.”
Lawmakers introduced the following trade-related bills since International Trade Today's last legislative update:
The Senate decisively passed a measure to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank in a July 27 vote. The reauthorization, which was tacked onto the highway bill as an amendment, received 64 votes in favor, while 29 Senators opposed. A test vote the day before paved the way for passage of the amendment (see 1507270023). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups applauded the Senate vote. "Ex-Im levels the global market for American exporters seeking crucial overseas support in their efforts to remain competitive with their foreign counterparts," said top official at the chamber, Bruce Josten, in a statement. “It is now time for the U.S. House of Representatives to take the final step toward reauthorization and eliminate risking hundreds of thousands of American jobs and the livelihood of our small- and medium-size businesses.” Speaking on the Senate floor on July 28, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called on lawmakers to pass the legislation before August recess. But House officials have repeatedly rejected the Senate’s highway bill, which would fund transportation projects over a six-year period. Republican leadership won’t take that legislation up for a vote before departing Capitol Hill on July 30, said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a July 27 briefing with reporters. The Senate must pass the House’s short-term stopgap in order to avert a lapse in funding, said McCarthy.
The tariff phase-out schedule for products included in Information Technology Agreement expansion will be negotiated “this fall,” said a spokesman for the Canadian Trade Department on July 28. The eighty-one countries to the ITA pact finalized the terms of expansion in recent days (see 1507240020). Expansion aims to eliminate $1 trillion in global duties on high-tech goods (see 1507200026). The expansion list covers roughly 200 products across the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, ranging from adhesives to filtering machinery to electromagnets (here). The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative didn't respond for comment.
The U.S. should ensure the Trans-Pacific Partnership doesn’t fuel a spike in tobacco consumption among negotiating parties by including language in the pact to shield those countries from tobacco industry challenge, said all 15 Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee in recent days. “As countries around the world are implementing meaningful tobacco control measures to prevent or reduce tobacco consumption, the tobacco industry is stepping up its opposition to those policies through industry initiated international trade disputes,” said the lawmakers in a July 24 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman (here). “Protecting the sovereign right of countries to adopt legitimate policies to reduce tobacco consumption from tobacco industry subversion in the TPP is critical to the health of the citizens of all of the TPP countries, including the United States.” Some U.S. public officials, lawmakers and health advocates have called for a tobacco “carve-out” in the agreement, a mechanism that would exempt that industry from dispute settlement (see 14012825). The lawmakers, led by Reps. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., and Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., urged Froman to honor an amendment on Fiscal Year 2014 appropriations legislation which barred the use of U.S. funds to promote tobacco exports.