Trade Enforcement Bill Introduced in the House

According to a Ways and Means summary of H.R. 496, the Trade Enforcement Act of 2009 will:

Require USTR to address other countries' non-tariff barriers. U.S. exporters frequently face non-tariff barriers to U.S. exports, including sanitary measures on agricultural products and barriers that keep U.S. manufactured exports out of foreign markets. The bill requires USTR to identify annually "priority foreign countries" with unfair barriers and take action.

Prioritize America's trade enforcement efforts. The bill restores the "Super 301" provision signed into law by President Reagan and requires USTR to prioritize annually the most significant barriers to U.S. exports and work to eliminate them.

Create Office of Congressional Trade Enforcer. The Office will investigate barriers to U.S. exports, develop complaints against foreign countries, and call on USTR to file cases.

Elevate USTR's General Counsel to ambassadorial rank. The Senate-confirmed officer will work to ensure that U.S. trading partners comply with their trade agreements.

Lock in "CVD NME" and ensure that subsidies are fully counted. In 2007, the Department of Commerce began applying countervailing duties (CVDs) to unfairly subsidized and injurious imports from nonmarket economy countries (NMEs), like China. The bill locks in Commerce's change in practice, ensures that Commerce fully captures NME subsidy practices, and ensures that Congress has a role in determining when an NME should be treated as a market economy country.

Safeguard U.S. industries' interests. Critical to Congress' approval of China's WTO entry was the inclusion of a safeguard mechanism providing temporary relief if Chinese imports caused market disruption to an industry in the U.S. Four times, the independent International Trade Commission recommended relief, and four times President Bush denied that relief. According to the summary, plants have closed and jobs have been lost as a result. The bill would limit executive branch discretion to deny relief.

Fix mandatory offsets ("zeroing") at home and in WTO. The WTO Appellate Body, contradicting successive WTO panels of trade experts, has imposed a new requirement not contained in the WTO agreements by mandating that the U.S. offset dumped sales with non-dumped sales. The bill contains a Sense of Congress that the Appellate Body should adhere to the WTO's strict requirement that the Appellate Body not create new rights or obligations. The Department of Commerce has stated that the WTO Appellate Body decisions are "devoid of legal merit," yet has nonetheless chosen to implement the decisions in ways that fail to capture the unfair trade practice. The bill overturns Commerce's decision and directs it to come up with an approach that captures fully the unfair trade practice.

Correct Bratsk. The bill corrects the Bratsk decision, in which a U.S. court incorrectly interpreted U.S. antidumping or countervailing duty law to limit the ability of U.S. companies to obtain relief from unfairly traded imports.

Enforce U.S. intellectual property rights (IPR). The bill creates a Director of IPR Enforcement and an IPR Enforcement advisory committee to advise on IPR enforcement issues; promotes the use of new technology to better fight infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR); creates a "watch list" for suspected bad actors; and prevents Customs from excusing fines assessed for illegal imports.

Improve import safety. The bill creates a voluntary government-private sector import safety program, requires the use of "unique identifiers" to facilitate identifying the source of goods that pose health and safety threats, and establishes new sanctions for repeated non-compliance with U.S. health and safety laws.

Increase staffing, resources, training and coordination. The bill authorizes the support, resources and training that Customs and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) need and deserve to carry out their import safety and IPR enforcement responsibilities.

House Ways and Means Committee sources note that H.R. 496 is virtually the identical (with the exception of certain technical changes) to H.R. 6530 which was introduced in July 2008 (but never passed). See ITT's Online Archives or 07/21/08 news, 08072115, for BP summary of H.R. 6530.

House Ways and Means Committee press release (dated 01/15/09) available at http://waysandmeans.house.gov/News.asp?FormMode=print&ID=847.

House Ways and Means Committee summary available at http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/110/sste.pdf.