Something happened in DC today ...
Missouri, Illinois firms lose jobs, sales due to lax customs enforcement
By Robert Koenig, Beacon Washington correspondent -- May 5, 2011
Both of Missouri's U.S. senators, Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Roy Blunt, testified at Thursday's hearing that they were frustrated by the lack of enforcement by the agencies of the Commerce Department and the Homeland Security Department's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.
"Missouri jobs are at stake here," said McCaskill, citing companies in the state that have been affected. "We are complicit in allowing our federal government to ignore laws that are doing more harm in my state, in terms of job creation, than many other things that we spend more time on" to try to create work.
[...]
"It can take nine months just for Customs to refer an allegation to its own field office," McCaskill said. "Why does it take so long for Customs to refer an allegation to Customs?"
Good Question. 9 Months to report a Violation?
Someone is on the take ... it would seem.
Or incompetent ... or woefully understaffed ...
Sen. Sherrod Brown pushes for trade enforcement
Dayton Business Journal - by DBJ Staff -- May 5, 2011
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, continues to make a case for stronger trade enforcement.
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“I want to note that this hearing is particularly timely as our trade enforcement laws are under attack at the World Trade Organization,” Brown said.
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“We know that our antidumping and countervailing duty laws work,” Brown said. “They level the playing field and allow employers to retain and create jobs.”
Great Point. Antidumping laws work.
Level the playing field allows employers to retain and create jobs.
Level the playing KEEPS JOBS at Home.
Ron Wyden demands better enforcement of U.S. trade laws
Published: Thursday, May 05, 2011,
"While agencies are dragging their feet to enforce our trade laws, this country’s domestic manufacturers are being hammered by foreign trade cheats,” Sen. Ron Wyden said.
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The evasion is both simple and largely unpunished, investigators have found. In the case of Tubular Products, the Chinese company avoided paying high tariffs by sending pipe to Vietnam where it was then “threaded and coupled in Vietnam and then mislabeled as Vietnamese products.”
The number of products and commodities is growing as well, involving everything from the metal pipes Tubular Products makes to the indigo that makes jeans blue to steel wire garment hangers to honey, petroleum wax candles, laminated woven sacks, activated carbon, even garlic. Each of those items has been subject to sanctions, but Wyden suggested that for every case that’s brought hundreds might evade detection.
“This demonstrates a broken system and that’s what really concerns me,” he said during the hearing.
A "broken system" needs to be fixed. Enforce the Tariff Laws already on the books, please.
Leveling the playing field will means keeping American Jobs ... AT HOME!
SO Why Don't we? SO WHEN will we?
Say John Boehner -- Where are those Jobs?