Congress has been back in session for little more than a week and already trade issues are taking center stage. Last week, Reps. Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sander Levin, Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, introduced H.R. 496, The Trade Enforcement Act of 2009. 

 

The legislation hopes to bring renewed focus on trade enforcement. 
The proposed bill hopes to prioritize America’s trade enforcement efforts by requiring the USTR to annually prioritize the most significant barriers to U.S. exports and work to eliminate them. In order to accomplish this, the bill also aims to create the Office of Congressional Trade Enforcer and elevate USTR’s General Counsel to Ambassadorial Rank.


Additionally, H.R. 496 intends to restore and enhance U.S. trade by fixing mandatory offsets and home and in WTO. The Department of Commerce has stated that the WTO Appellate Body decisions are “devoid of legal merit,” yet has chosen to implement the decisions in ways that fail to capture the unfair trade practice, claims the bill. It would overturn Commerce's decision and direct it to come up with an approach that captures fully the unfair trade practice.


The bill also plans to combat counterfeiting and piracy by creating a Director of IPR Enforcement and an IPR Enforcement advisory committee to advise on IPR enforcement issues; promotes the use of new technology to better fight infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR); creates a “watch list” for suspected bad actors; and prevents Customs from excusing fines assessed for illegal imports.
The bill also aims to Improve Import Safety by creating a voluntary government-private sector import safety program which requires the use of “unique identifiers” to facilitate identifying the source of goods that pose health and safety threats.