Inform Consumers Act Part of Must-Pass Defense Bill; SIMP Expansions Are Not

The 75 amendments that will be voted on as a package with the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act include the INFORM Consumers Act, a piece of legislation that shifts more responsibility to online marketplaces to root out counterfeit goods.

The INFORM Consumers Act requires high-volume third party sellers on e-commerce platforms to have to disclose their names and a way to contact them. A high-volume seller is defined as someone who has made 200 or more sales in a 12-month period, worth $5,000 or more. It also requires companies like Amazon or eBay to create a hotline to allow customers to report postings they believe to be stolen, counterfeit or dangerous products. The Federal Trade Commission would enforce the law. This amendment also made it into the NDAA amendments last year, but did not become law. The House NDAA does not include the amendment, but the House passed it as part of its China package, the America COMPETES Act.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association said at the time the amendment was introduced: "Including this legislation within the 2023 NDAA is a win for transparency and accountability and is a crucial step in curbing the growth of organized retail crime. We appreciate Senators Dick Durbin and Bill Cassidy for their bipartisan commitment to tackling this problem and we encourage lawmakers to use this opportunity to make INFORM a reality."

A proposal to require a new Section 301 exclusion process did not make it into the package. Proposals to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (see 2210040036) will not get a vote, either.

However, SIMP is part of the Coast Guard reauthorization language. It directs the Commerce Department, in coordination with CBP, to develop a strategy "to improve the quality and verifiability of already collected Seafood Import Monitoring Program Message Set data elements in the Automated Commercial Environment system" within six months of the bill's passage.

It said the agency should prioritize the use of checkboxes, dropdown menus, or radio buttons and other enumerated data types.

It also directs the Commerce Department to audit supporting records on the species subject to SIMP, "to support statistically robust conclusions that the samples audited are representative of all seafood imports covered by the Seafood Import Monitoring Act."

Also, one year after the bill's passage, SIMP cannot allow aggregate harvest reporting for Northern red snapper.

The bill authorizes $20 million in annual appropriations to CBP for forced labor enforcement related to fishing for FY 2023 through 2027, and says that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should focus on vessels from countries that engage in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing or that have forced labor or human trafficking in their seafood supply chains. The department should consult the State Department's and Labor Department's reports on trafficking in persons and list of goods produced by child labor or forced labor, the bill says.

The Commerce Department will need to submit an annual report on its "efforts to prevent the importation of seafood harvested through illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing, particularly with respect to seafood harvested, produced, processed, or manufactured by forced labor."

Other trade-related amendments that made it into the package include the United States-Ecuador Partnership Act of 2022, which calls on the administration to help Ecuador "improve efficiency and transparency in customs administration, including through support for the Government of Ecuador's ongoing efforts to digitize its customs process and accept electronic documents required for the import, export, and transit of goods under specific international standards, as well as related training to expedite customs, security, efficiency, and competitiveness." It also calls on the U.S. to support Ecuador's efforts to lower its own trade barriers.

While the Section 232 reform proposed by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, did not make it in, an amendment that would create a council to consider "economic security" in the Commerce Department is attached to the bill.

The broadness of economic security is one of the loopholes some legislators would like to close in the Section 232 statute.

This council would be charged with "identifying concentrated risks for trade and economic security; setting priorities for securing the trade and economic security of the United States; proposing statutory and regulatory changes impacting trade and economic security" and coordinating departmentwide activity on trade and economic security matters.

Within 180 days of enactment, and annually after that, the council is required to brief relevant committees on its actions.

An amendment to establish an office of Manufacturing Security and Resilience also won a spot in the package of amendments. It calls on the administration to "strengthen and increase trade through new and revised trade agreements and other forms of engagement between the United States, and allies or key international partners, in order to mitigate -- covered supply chain vulnerabilities; and the effects of supply chain shocks ... [and to] [r]ecover from supply chain shocks."