The Senate Finance Committee voted 15-13 to recommend that Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus be the next CBP commissioner. All Democrats and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., supported Magnus, who would be the first openly gay head of CBP, in the Nov. 3 vote. A floor vote hasn't been scheduled for his nomination.
The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled a Nov. 3 vote on Chris Magnus' nomination for CBP commissioner.
Amazon announced that it supports a rewrite of the House bill that would require e-commerce platforms to verify the identity of some high-volume third-party sellers, and would also require some disclosure to consumers about those sellers.
House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and 14 other Democrats on the committee, are asking the administration to undertake a thorough investigation of the sugarcane harvest in the Dominican Republic, which uses many Haitian workers. That sugar is exported to the U.S., they said. "It has been more than ten years since a Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) labor submission requested the U.S. government investigate human trafficking, forced and child labor, hazardous working and living conditions, and other labor rights violations in the Dominican sugar industry," they said in a statement. "Despite attempts to address those problems, the recent [news] reports raise grave concerns of continued inhumane conditions that we simply cannot tolerate in our supply chains. We are eager to work with the Biden administration, which is renewing America’s commitment to human rights and labor fairness, to ensure that the United States is aggressively working to end to these outrageous, abusive practices.”
Although it's not known what sort of electric vehicle purchase incentives might be included in Build Back Better legislation, Canada and Mexico are arguing to congressional leaders that offering larger tax credits for U.S.-assembled electric vehicles hurts both the integrated North American auto industry and undermines the USMCA.
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., opened up a discussion on a recent report on targeted decoupling based on risk, with a focus on artificial intelligence, at a virtual event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Oct. 22. Hill said the discussion was "long overdue," and that China's direction is "squarely in conflict with the global order, balance of power in East Asia, and the continued open, market-based trading system."
The House Ethics Committee unanimously found that "there is substantial reason to believe" that Rep. Mike Kelly's wife purchased at least $15,000 worth of stock in Cleveland-Cliffs based on non-public information about a Section 232 investigation into the import of laminations for stacked cores for incorporation into transformers, stacked and wound cores for incorporation into transformers, electrical transformers, and transformer regulators. The Kellys live in Butler, Pennsylvania, where about 1,400 people work for the steel company, making electrical steel. The company had repeatedly argued that unless the 25% tariffs on steel were extended to these downstream products, it would have to close the Butler plant.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., Congressional-Executive Commission on China Co-Chairman Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the CEO of Universal Electronics to explain who authorized the hiring of transferred Uyghur laborers at its Chinese factories, what the daily reports to the police about those Uyghurs say, and what documentation the company has to back up its assertion that none of its Chinese factories use forced labor.
The co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and two prominent Republicans also on the commission asked the acting CBP commissioner if the agency has stopped imports under the Xinjiang cotton withhold release order from companies that have advertised that they use Xinjiang cotton. Their letter listed 38 companies, mostly Chinese brands, but also Hugo Boss, Asics and FILA. The letter had a footnote that said Hugo Boss said that a comment on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter supporting Xinjiang cotton was not authorized and was pulled down.
Eighteen of the 36 Texas representatives in the House and both of Texas's senators asked the new ambassador to Mexico to press Mexico to fulfill its promises on approving agricultural biotech products and to keep Mexico's oil industry open to foreign investors. In an Oct. 19 letter, they wrote: "Texas farmers and ranchers have long benefited from free trade with Mexico and Canada. The USMCA locked in key provisions for agriculture and includes state of the art rules on agricultural biotechnology. Rigorous enforcement of these important priorities is vital for Texas producers. Mexico remains the top destination for U.S. agricultural trade -- ensuring that Mexico abides by these commitments remains a top concern for the producers we represent. We also have raised these concerns directly with United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai. Proper implementation of the USMCA is a top priority and the U.S. must engage at all levels of government to ensure that the American people can reap the full benefits from this important trade agreement."