House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Smith and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Adrian Smith called out U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai for the lengthy wait for the Section 301 tariffs review, which officially started in July 2022 after a round of comments that year in May in favor of extending the action.

A bill that would impose new requirements for e-commerce platforms to detect and police counterfeits, Shop Safe (Stopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in E-commerce), will be moving through the House Judiciary Committee "in the next few weeks," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said May 7. Issa, who chairs Judiciary's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, spoke to International Trade Today after a hearing his subcommittee held on the administration's response to counterfeits.

The subcommittee that covers intellectual property issues under the House Judiciary Committee questioned how Congress should address the escalating volume of de minimis packages -- and the opportunities those shipments provide for sending counterfeits and goods made with forced labor, but the CBP witness responsible for de minimis and IP declined to back any of the ideas that were bandied about.

The Mediterranean Shipping Company denied allegations by the Federal Maritime Commission that it knowingly violated U.S. shipping laws, calling a proposed $63.2 million FMC penalty "excessive and unlawful.”

Automakers and their trade groups cautioned the Bureau of Industry and Security to tailor its restrictions narrowly -- and allow a phase-in -- if they want manufacturers to stop buying information technology components from China for cars with advanced features, including electric cars.

Canadian Solar, which is ramping up a 5-gigawatt solar panel manufacturing factory in Texas, told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that tariff rate quotas on solar cells under the current safeguard action and Section 301 tariffs on machinery that helps make solar panels and cells are harming solar manufacturers. Canadian Solar also is working on opening a solar cell plant in Indiana, but it won't open until late 2025. It imports cells made in Thailand. The TRQ only allows five gigawatts' worth of tariff-free cells in annually.

In the first third of its first public hearing on promoting supply chain resilience, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and interagency officials heard from groups disputing the premise of the project -- that liberalizing trade was harmful to U.S. workers and manufacturing -- and from those who say the worker-centered trade approach of the Biden administration is not going far enough to restore American manufacturing.

Representatives from the domestic textiles industry testified at an Office of the U.S. Trade Representative hearing May 2 regarding ways to promote supply chain resilience, especially after many were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic (see 2404290057).

An element of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits package that has passed the House Ways and Means Committee next month could result in some apparel items being added to the eligibility list for the first time, something sponsor Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., has pushed for since 2023.

Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller, just after telling an appropriations committee member that CBP's staff "need help in the de minimis environment," told her that there are legislative proposals, that if they were to pass, "allow us to actually bring that level [of shipments] down to a manageable level for us."