Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015--Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I rise today in strong support of the conference report to accompany the Trade Facilitation and Trade Customs conference report on which we just had a cloture vote. I was very pleased to see 73 U.S. Senators vote in favor of proceeding to and getting a final vote on the conference report. It is important because this legislation represents the most significant update to our trade enforcement policies in over a decade, and its passage today and enactment into law will demonstrate yet again that this Congress is working in a bipartisan manner.

This bill is important for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, this legislation is about trade enforcement. This bill gives the U.S. Customs and Border Protection new tools to combat unfair trade practices, thus protecting American jobs and American workers. These enforcement provisions are important to a wide range of American manufacturers, which is why the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Iron and Steel Institute strongly support this bill. In fact, there are approximately 100 organizations and businesses that have expressed public support for this bill. For any Senator who has manufacturing in his or her State, supporting this conference report should be a no-brainer.

These enforcement provisions are important to many other sectors of the economy as well. Take honey producers, for example, who in my home State make South Dakota one of the top honey-producing States in the Nation. Back in 2011, I was the ranking member of the Trade Subcommittee of the Finance Committee, and Senator Wyden was the chairman of that subcommittee. We held a hearing on the topic of how America can better enforce our trade laws, and we heard testimony from Richard Adee, a well-known honey producer in my home State of South Dakota about the problem of honey laundering. Simply put, honey laundering is the practice of unscrupulous honey producers in China using third-party countries to circumvent tariffs on dumped Chinese honey. Over the past decade this has been a major problem, costing U.S. honey producers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

As one example of this practice, consider Malaysia, a nation with the capacity to produce about 45,000 pounds of honey annually. Get this: Malaysia has exported as much as 37 million pounds of honey to the United States in a year--well beyond its production capacity. Clearly this honey is not coming from Malaysia. It is Chinese honey being transshipped through that nation.

The legislation we are considering today is finally going to give customs the tools it needs to help crack down on this practice. This will not only benefit honey producers in my State, it will benefit farmers all across the country whose crops depend upon bees for pollination and will benefit American consumers who can buy American honey with confidence.

While this bill is about enforcing our trade laws, it is also about making it easier for American businesses to engage in trade. This is especially important to small businesses that may not always have the resources or the expertise to access foreign markets.

The conference report before us includes a provision that I authored with Ranking Member Wyden that would update the so-called de minimis threshold for imports from $200 per product to $800 per product. The bill also includes an amendment that Senator Bennet and I offered at the Finance Committee, calling on our trading partners to follow our lead in this area. What this simply means is that if someone starts a small business selling goods on the Internet and he or she needs to import a component part in order to make a product, we are going to significantly reduce the paperwork and cost involved in doing so. This is the reason that online marketplaces such as Etsy and eBay, as well as express shippers like UPS and FedEx, are so supportive of this legislation. These companies understand what millions of American entrepreneurs understand: The Internet truly is the shipping lane of the 21st century.

This bill will empower more Americans to engage in global commerce both through the Internet and through more traditional means. This conference report will also help to ensure that access to the Internet, which is so important for global commerce, remains unencumbered.

This legislation includes a provision to make the existing ban on Internet access taxes permanent--something that Senator Wyden and I have championed and a measure that has broad bipartisan support. The Internet Tax Freedom Act has been extended eight times since it was first enacted in 1998. As I mentioned earlier, the Internet is increasingly a gateway to economic opportunity, often in the form of accessing new markets abroad.

As the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, one of my top priorities is expanding access to high-speed Internet from our inner cities to our most rural communities, and keeping access to the Internet unburdened by new taxes is an important step in that direction.

This Internet tax freedom provision is strongly supported by a broad spectrum of technology, cable, and telecom companies. It is also something that will benefit America's manufacturers. As the National Association of Manufacturers wrote recently in an op-ed supporting this bill: ``The Internet has become a critical piece of infrastructure for manufacturers in the United States, and permanently extending the ban on state and local taxes on Internet access will continue to foster investment in broadband networks.''

I was especially pleased that we were able to include a provision in the conference report granting States that already apply taxes on Internet access more than 4 years to adjust to the new law. I am confident this will give Congress the time necessary to address other important issues relating to Internet taxation.

Enactment of the permanent ITFA provision in this bill will clear the path for consideration of legislation empowering States when it comes to collecting sales taxes that are owed. I intend to continue to support efforts to ensure that we have a level playing field when it comes to the taxation of Internet commerce--something that is very important in my home State of South Dakota.

Last but certainly not least, I want to point out that this conference report includes provisions strongly in support of our ally, the State of Israel. Unfortunately, we have seen a disturbing trend in recent years where some nations are attempting to discriminate against Israeli-made goods for political reasons. This legislation creates a new principal trade-negotiating objective under trade promotion authority designed to discourage these unfair practices against Israel. Once this conference report becomes law, if a foreign nation proposes a new trade agreement with the United States, that nation will need to demonstrate that it does not have politically motivated discriminatory policies in place against our strongest ally in the Middle East.

I commend Senator Cardin and others who worked diligently to update our trade laws with respect to harmful actions against the State of Israel. I am pleased that we are finally seeing these efforts come to fruition.

Enactment of this legislation into law will represent a win for American manufacturers and farmers, a win for American producers, who have been harmed by unfairly traded Chinese goods, a win for small business owners looking to engage in global commerce, a win for consumers who depend upon Internet access that is accessible and affordable, and a win for those of us who want to stand up and support the State of Israel when that nation is being unfairly targeted. But all of that will be at risk if we do not pass this conference report. The House of Representatives has been very clear that it will not take up this bill again. All the good things in this bill that I mentioned will die. They will not become law if we do not pass the conference report as it is. The House approved this conference report over a month and a half ago. It is past time that we do the same. Let's get this done today and send this bill to the President for his signature. Let's continue to work together on other issues that still need to be addressed.

I thank Finance Committee Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Wyden for all of their hard work in getting us to this point. I hope the Senate will go on record--and I urge my colleagues to support this important trade enforcement legislation--in what I hope will be a very big and decisive vote.

This legislation is good for America. It demonstrates once again that the Senate takes seriously its responsibility to get results and get things done for the American people. It is good for our economy, it is good for jobs, and it is good for the overall health and vitality of our country.

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I am pleased to have been one of the conferees to H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.

There are many important provisions in this legislation, some of which I helped to draft.

There is one such provision that I particularly want to highlight. Honey producers in my State of South Dakota as well as producers of honey, crawfish, garlic, and mushrooms around the country, have suffered for 15 years because of unfair dumping from China. Senator Wyden and I have worked together for 5 years to ensure that the trade laws were enforced in these cases.

Unfortunately, the latest struggles have been more with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, than with Chinese dumpers.

Duties collected on dumped imports and all interest on those duties from 2000 and 2007 were to be paid to the injured domestic producers to allow them to reinvest and rebuild. For reasons that defy simple explanation, CBP ignored the direction of the statute to pay all interest to producers and instead deducted some types of interest from payments to producers.

In effect, this practice amounted to forcing South Dakota honey producers to pay for the delays caused by Chinese dumpers, the U.S. insurance companies that posted bond for the duties, and in some cases of CBP itself. This practice defies the plain language of the statute and cost domestic producers tens of millions of dollars over the years.

During the Finance Committee markup of this legislation, Senator Grassley, Senator Nelson, and I offered an amendment which is included in this conference report that corrects CBP's misreading of the law. This is an important victory for honey, crawfish, garlic, and mushroom that have suffered from Chinese dumping and CBP's unfounded practice.

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