U.S. Fashion Industry Association counsel David Spooner told attendees at the USFIA industry virtual conference Nov. 10 that while he thinks it's unlikely that the current administration would add new tariffs on China before leaving office in two months, it's possible that President Donald Trump could increase the tariff rate on list 4A, or put tariffs on list 4B, as a way of “venting his frustration with China.” Spooner, who is at law firm Barnes and Thornburg, said it's also possible that the administration will retaliate against European Union tariffs authorized by the World Trade Organization for past Boeing subsidies.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey and other Democratic committee leaders are expected to ask the FCC to stand down work on any further controversial matters during a potential transition from President Donald Trump’s administration if Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s leads hold in several marginal states, communications sector observers told us. No similar call from Senate Commerce Committee Democrats is expected, since the party doesn’t have control of the chamber, and the majority in the next Congress remains in doubt (see 2011050056), lobbyists said.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey and other Democratic committee leaders are expected to ask the FCC to stand down work on any further controversial matters during a potential transition from President Donald Trump’s administration if Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s leads hold in several marginal states, communications sector observers told us. No similar call from Senate Commerce Committee Democrats is expected, since the party doesn’t have control of the chamber, and the majority in the next Congress remains in doubt (see 2011050056), lobbyists said.
Safety advocates are seeking meetings and plan to oppose an FCC proposed order reallocating the 5.9 GHz band, said ITS America President Shailen Bhatt in an interview Tuesday. Bhatt hopes the FCC, set to vote on the order in two weeks, will pause to give dedicated short-range communications a final chance to succeed. “We’re disappointed our pleas have fallen on deaf ears so far,” he said: “Experts are being ignored. Data is missing.”
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Oct. 26-30 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The Office of Law Revision Counsel found that people who refer to Title 19 tend to know the substance of the provisions by the section number, so a reorganization that would create a change in numbers “posed a greater concern than the OLRC was aware of,” Law Revision Counsel Ralph Seep said in an Oct. 29 e-mail. The OLRC planned to reorganize trade laws from a chronological system to chapters based on subject matter, but recently announced it would hold off (see 2010220050).
Verance developed a “mechanism” for addressing the risks of fingerprint-based dynamic advertising insertion (DAI) technologies marring subscription VOD content viewing, said the company Thursday. It enables over-the-top services to “privately identify their content to TVs” to safeguard their content against audience measurement functionality while preventing insertion of unauthorized dynamic ads, said Verance. With DAI technologies newly “baked” into smart TVs, subscription VOD services and TV makers worry about the risk of “ads or measurement functions meant for broadcast being mistakenly placed into the streams” of OTT video services, it said. “We believe this will create a path forward for the subscription VOD and ad-supported broadcast worlds to co-exist,” said Verance CEO Nil Shah. Though TV makers are able to deactivate automatic content recognition (ACR) when apps run natively on a smart TV, “they currently have no way to do that for SVOD content played or casted from devices connected to the TV via HDMI,” said Verance. “SVOD content is indistinguishable from broadcast content when each is received from attached devices including media sticks, set-top boxes and A/V receivers.” With broadcast TV becoming more interactive through the advent of platforms like ATSC 3.0, it’s important for TVs “to have more advanced ACR technology,” said Verance. “We not only need to know what content each person is watching but how it is being distributed,” said Shah. “If I am watching Seinfeld on Netflix and hit pause or playback, that shouldn’t be an opportunity for an ad that is supposed to appear in broadcast syndication to play and ruin my ad-free viewer experience on a subscription service.”
Declines in sports viewership during the COVID-19 pandemic are a “cause for concern,” blogged Lightshed Partners Wednesday (password needed), saying sports viewership is “getting slaughtered” in the competition for time and attention. Sports leagues “may have to evolve their media strategies to avoid the more existential risks ahead for their partners,” said analysts.
CTIA urged the FCC to “pause any increase” in federal Lifeline minimum service standards (MSS) until after it releases its Lifeline market report, expected next year. “In the uncertain times created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission can provide certainty to millions of low-income Americans who are relying upon Lifeline supported mobile wireless services to stay connected,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 17-287. There's “overwhelming” consensus in support of a pause, the group said.
CTIA urged the FCC to “pause any increase” in federal Lifeline minimum service standards (MSS) until after it releases its Lifeline market report, expected next year. “In the uncertain times created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commission can provide certainty to millions of low-income Americans who are relying upon Lifeline supported mobile wireless services to stay connected,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 17-287. There's “overwhelming” consensus in support of a pause, the group said.