WASHINGTON — March 1, 2024 — U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Jack Reed (D-RI) sent a letter today to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas applauding the agency for supporting the creation of a comprehensive customs enforcement plan, and asking him to swiftly implement the plan to safeguard the competitiveness of American manufacturers, particularly in the textile industry.
“We are pleased to see that you are directing Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, and other agencies and offices in DHS to significantly increase their work detecting, preventing, and prosecuting customs violations and fraud harming the U.S. textile industry. Moreover, we applaud your decision to create a comprehensive enforcement plan within 30 days,” wrote the senators. “The scale and scope of illegal customs practices undercutting the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers is daunting, and this problem cannot be fixed without a robust, expeditiously deployed enforcement plan.”
Chinese e-commerce giants as well as criminals and cartels abuse gaps in U.S. customs law and the law’s implementation to move their illicit or illegally produced products into the United States. Harmful and illegal customs and trade practices take a number of forms, including:
- Exploiting the duty-free and inspection-free “de minimis” treatment of packages valued under $800;
- Circumvention of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act;
- Skirting Sec. 301 penalty tariffs and other trade enforcement measures; and
- False origin claims under U.S. free trade agreements that displace domestic and regionally-produced textiles and apparel.
“As part of your enforcement plan, we encourage you to comprehensively address each of these avenues for fraud, including by exercising the administration’s considerable authorities to confront the massive unregulated trade entering the U.S. via the de minimis exception, which is exacerbating the economic crisis faced by American manufacturers and retailers and allowing entry of goods made with forced labor, illegal drugs like fentanyl, and fake and unsafe products,” added the senators.
Cracking down on customs violations and fraud will level the playing field for the U.S. textiles industry, which employs nearly 550,000 workers and produces nearly $66 billion annually in economic output.
Whitehouse helped convene the Rhode Island Textile Innovation Network and has for years championed Rhode Island’s textile industry.
Whitehouse is a cosponsor of Senator Brown’s Import Security and Fairness Act, a bill to stop goods from non-market economies, such as China, from receiving de minimis treatment, giving foreign companies an unfair advantage by allowing them to avoid paying duties and fees. Whitehouse and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) also introduced the bipartisan Customs Modernization Act of 2023, legislation to increase U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s visibility into international supply chains to resolve data collection constraints, expand the legal use of trade data, increase supply chain accountability, improve enforcement effectiveness, and bolster information sharing among government agencies.
A copy of the letter is available here and the text is below.
The Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
2707 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE
Washington, DC 20528
Dear Secretary Mayorkas,
We are pleased to see that you are directing Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations, and other agencies and offices in DHS to significantly increase their work detecting, preventing, and prosecuting customs violations and fraud harming the U.S. textile industry. Moreover, we applaud your decision to create a comprehensive enforcement plan within 30 days.
The scale and scope of illegal customs practices undercutting the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers is daunting, and this problem cannot be fixed without a robust, expeditiously deployed enforcement plan.
Harmful and illegal customs practices take various forms, including but not limited to current implementation and the abuse of the Sec. 321 de minimis tariff wavier system, circumvention of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, Sec. 301 penalty tariffs and other trade enforcement measures, and false origin claims under U.S. free trade agreements that displace domestic and regionally-produced textiles and apparel. As part of your enforcement plan, we encourage you to comprehensively address each of these avenues for fraud, including by exercising the administration’s considerable authorities to confront the massive unregulated trade entering the U.S. via the de minimis exception, which is exacerbating the economic crisis faced by American manufacturers and retailers and allowing entry of goods made with forced labor, illegal drugs like fentanyl, and fake and unsafe products.
Immediately implementing a strong customs enforcement plan is critical to the future of the U.S. textile industrial base. After facing decades of unfair trade practices, textiles manufacturers are seeing unprecedented demand destruction and dangerously low capacity utilization rates. The textiles industry contributes significantly to the U.S. economy and supplies essential products, such as national defense materials and medical personal protective equipment. Furthermore, this enforcement plan is necessary to further the goals of the President’s U.S. supply chain resilience project that you helped launch in November of last year. The textiles industry employs nearly 550,000 U.S. workers and produces almost $66 billion in output annually. Without an expeditious and effective enforcement plan, the devastation felt throughout the production chain will only worsen.
In closing, we welcome your call for an action plan and will be keenly interested in the contents and follow-through given its importance to our constituents and American economic competitiveness.
Sincerely,
Posted: March 2, 2024
Source: Office of U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
