Trade groups want the FCC to continue a flexible approach to accessibility rules, but consumer groups want Congress to expand the agency’s authority to keep up with shifts in technology, said comments filed by Monday’s deadline in docket 10-213 responding to the FCC’s call for feedback on accessibility under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (see 2202170052). The CVAA requires the FCC to create a biennial report to Congress on progress in technology access.

Shareholders of communications, media and tech companies will decide this spring on more public lobbying disclosures, changes to their executive compensation policies and especially new environmental and societal policies, according to scheduled proxy votes in coming weeks. In almost all cases, the companies' boards recommend "no" votes on the shareholder-brought proposals. Corporate governance experts told us advocates often aren't banking on approval in a given year but are trying to build momentum year after year until enough general support is generated.

It’s not the FTC’s job to remedy illegal transactions if parties propose “facially anticompetitive deals,” Chair Lina Khan said Monday during an enforcers’ summit with DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Some transactions are illegal on the face, and enforcers need the tools and confidence to block, she said. The FTC’s Republican commissioners didn’t appear at the summit.

FORT LAUDERDALE -- The supply chain for the custom integrator channel is struggling with a barrage of setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and several natural disasters, said Keith James, Crestron director-strategic supply chain and manufacturing operations, at the Home Technology Specialists Association spring conference last week. James said “some relief” is likely in 2023.

Friday’s unanimous three-judge opinion at the U.S. Court of International Trade remanding the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for correcting deficiencies in the agency’s Administrative Procedure Act compliance (see 2204010059) extends the current litigation at least until mid-summer. The opinion, written by Chief Judge Mark Barnett and coming two months to the day after Feb. 1 oral argument (see 2202010053), gives USTR 90 days, to June 30, to respond to the remand order, and orders the plaintiffs and the government to convene on a joint status report, including a proposed schedule on “the further disposition of this litigation,” for submission 14 days after USTR files its remand results.

The FCC could face a tough challenge in looking at possible standards for receivers, as part of a notice inquiry teed up for a commissioner vote April 21 (see 2203310065). Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, working with Commissioner Nathan Simington, circulated a draft NOI last week. Receiver problems figured prominently in recent spectrum fights, most notably the C band, but industry officials said there’s no easy approach for the FCC. In the C band, the FAA and airline industry fought to protect altimeters operating in spectrum more than 200 MHz away.

Many of the commitments the Chinese made in the January 2020 phase one trade agreement with the U.S. (see 2001160022) “reflected changes that China had already been planning or pursuing for its own benefit or that otherwise served China’s interests,” said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in its annual report Thursday on U.S. foreign trade barriers. Though China “followed through” in enacting some of its phase one pledges, “it has not yet implemented some of the more significant commitments and fell far short of implementing its commitments to purchase U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021,” said USTR.

The door is open for Congress to name conferees to negotiate its China package, after both chambers cleared procedural hurdles last week (see 2203230065). Senators expressed optimism Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would achieve his goal of naming conferees to a formal negotiation before the end of the work period Friday. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., criticized the lack of return on provisions that would send billions to Intel, the largest American semiconductor manufacturer.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “properly exercised its authority” under the Section 307 modification provisions of the 1974 Trade Act when it ordered the imposition of the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Friday. Test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, plus the more than 3,600 complaints that followed, sought to vacate the tariffs on grounds that Lists 3 and 4A were unlawful without USTR launching a new Section 301 investigation tat formed the legal basis of the Lists 1 and 2 tariffs.

Three years after Amazon’s effort to build a second headquarters in New York were quashed, partly over unionization concerns, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), founded in Staten Island, New York, became Amazon’s first union Friday in a 2,654-2,131 vote.