ENFORCE PASSES THE CONGRESS! Today, the US Senate took up the vote for the long-delayed conference report for the Customs Reauthorization bill – The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 – HR 644. The Senate passed this important legislation, 75 to 20, to send the bill to President Obama for signature. It was passed the by US House of Representatives, 256 to 158, on Friday, December 11.

This bill contains the ENFORCE Act, which was drafted by a small coalition of AWPA members, almost eight years ago. Joe Downes, who was President Industrial Materials at Leggett & Platt when the coalition was formed, provided invaluable resources by tasking first Wendy Watson and then Amy DeArmond to manage the coalition efforts. Wendy, Amy and the other coalition members Milton Magnus of M&B Metal Products Company; H Woltz of Insteel Industries; David Libla and George Skarich of Mid Continent Steel & Wire; Bill Upton and Alan Logan of Vulcan Steel Products; and Tim Selhorst of American Spring Wire put in countless hours of visits, calls and coalition meetings to bring this legislation to passage by Congress.

This win would not have been possible without the active participation of our AWPA member company representatives, and Janet Kopenhaver, AWPA Director of Government Affairs, who participated in numerous meetings here in Washington, DC with lawmakers and agencies. Members sent countless letters and emails; made calls; and invited Representatives and Senators to their plants to obtain their support. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and the Steel Manufactures Association (SMA) provided very valuable inside Washington expertise and lobbying strength.

During the debate, several Senators provided bi-partisan support of ENFORCE.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
This bill will facilitate trade and improve our competitiveness. Through its enactment, we will grow jobs in this country and grow our economy. It will improve enforcement of our trade laws by establishing a new and improved process at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop the evasion of duties.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
This bill will allow the United States to start coming down hard on trade cheats who are ripping off U.S. jobs. The legislation represents a tougher approach to enforcing our trade laws and assures tough trade enforcement policies to get the trade cheats. This closes a major loophole in our trade system – merchandise laundering. This practice occurs when a country gets caught dumping and is mandated to pay AD and CVD duties. They simply ship the products to another country and slap a label on them and ship them here duty free. While this bill is important for future trade agreements, it also makes sure that we are tough on enforcement for existing trade agreements and laws.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD)
This bill is about trade enforcement. It gives CBP new tools to combat unfair trade practices.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
I strongly support ENFORCE which helps provide a level playing field to ensure our companies can compete fairly and not be disadvantaged by illegal dumping which runs American companies out of business and puts steelworkers in my state out of work. ENFORCE puts some teeth into the process. I would support ENFORCE if it was a separate piece of legislation. However, its benefits are not enough to overcome my reservations with other provisions in this Customs bill.

On the House side, we want to particularly thank Lou Barletta (R-PA), Jason T. Smith (R-MO), and Linda T. Sanchez (D-CA) for their very vocal support of ENFORCE. Many other Congressmen and women deserve our thanks for their support and their votes. Please be sure to write a letter or make a call to thank the legislators who worked on and voted for passage of this important piece of legislation.

The ENFORCE Act addresses the problem of foreign countries exporting products to the US and circumventing the antidumping (AD) and countervailing duties (CVD) on those products.  ENFORCE gives Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the tools to address the serious problem of duty evasion by countries that are illegally transshipping their products through third countries.