Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., recently suggested that executive action for a carbon border adjustment tax might be more achievable than passing a bill through Congress. Whitehouse, who has sponsored a CBA, was invited to speak at a virtual forum hosted by Bruegel, a European think tank that analyzes the economics of policy questions.

Between increased enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and a proposed EU bill banning the sale of goods made with forced labor, Wiley lawyers predict supply chains will shift away from China and other forced labor hot spots.

African Growth and Opportunity Act benefits for Kenya need to continue as any trade partnership is formed, commenters said, especially the third-country fabric rule of origin.

A senior adviser to the U.S. trade representative said that Section 301 tariffs are no longer in place to try to change Chinese economic behavior but suggested they can't be modified unless trade policymakers understand how removing them would influence the administration's desire "to move to a resilience economy away from an efficient economy."

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Reducing wait times for cargo at the U.S.-Mexico border by 10 minutes would allow an additional $312 million in imports annually and increase production in Mexico in export sectors by 2%, a new report from the Atlantic Council projects.

Despite sales terms to the contrary, a Hong Kong middleman never held title to merchandise imported from China and Taiwan into the U.S., so “first sale” valuation is unavailable and the goods should be valued at the price paid by the importer, CBP said in a recent ruling. Incoterms aside, the importer paid for freight and insurance, and title transferred alongside risk of loss directly from the manufacturer to the importer, with the middleman acting more as agent, CBP said in HQ H316892.

Made in China 2025, China's public document of its ambitions for technology dominance, came out of Chinese officials' anxiety about their tech vulnerability due to integration of U.S. and Chinese supply chains, panelists said during a Peterson Institute for International Economics webcast Sept. 23 featuring PIIE scholars and an expert on China's foreign economic policy from the University of Maryland, Margaret Pearson.

House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., threw cold water on a proposal to refund tariffs that should have been waived through the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, as importers continue to wait for the program's reauthorization. All tariffs will start the refund process once the bill becomes law, but Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., says the best chance of that is in December (see 2209200068).

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is setting new procedures for claiming Craft Beverage Modernization Act tax reductions beginning in 2023. The agency’s temporary rule implements the transfer of authority to administer CBMA provisions from CBP to TTB, and creates a new system wherein importers will claim refunds retroactively each quarter, rather than at time of entry. Producer registration, assignment of credits and importer claims will all be filed in the agency’s myTTB online system and tied to data filed in ACE at entry.