[CTC] Levin criticizes House changes to Senate customs bill [designed to make Fast Track even worse]

[Arthur Stamoulis]

POLITICO
Levin criticizes House changes to Senate customs bill
 
6/10/15 2:18 PM EDT
House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sander Levin today blasted the customs and enforcement bill posted by Republican leadership, which contains significant differences from the Senate version that run the risk of being stripped out in conference.  

The House bill removes an amendment Sen. Chuck Schumer added in the Finance Committee that would allow the U.S. to consider currency manipulation as part of anti-subsidy investigations.


It also contains a compromise provision on human trafficking, which would allow deals with countries with serious human trafficking violations to be fast-tracked if that country has “taken concrete action” to address the problem. This is softer language than Sen. Robert Menendez added to the Senate’s trade promotion authority bill, which would prohibit deals from the worst, or “Tier 3,” human trafficking countries from being fast-tracked.

“This provision appears to be inconsistent with the labor obligations House Democrats have insisted upon, which require our trading partners to meet minimum standards regarding forced labor before Congress votes on a trade agreement,” a press release from Levin's office said.

The House bill also bars climate change obligations in trade deals considered under fast track as well as immigration language, such as allocating more visas for high-skilled workers.

In addition, the bill doesn’t contain trade remedy changes spearheaded by Sen. Sherrod Brown nor language to reform the process for approving miscellaneous tariff bills.

“House Republicans are using the Customs bill as a vehicle to further in TPA their rigid ideological agenda,” Levin said. “They also strike any form of meaningful action against currency manipulation and weaken trade enforcement provisions.”

— Victoria Guida
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20150610/42830524/attachment.htm>