Government Affairs & Legal

As required by law, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced May 3 that it has initiated a four-year “review of necessity” process for tariffs on Chinese imports under Sec. 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. In a May 10 speech, President Joe Biden said combating inflation is his top domestic priority citing the pandemic, supply chain issues and war in Ukraine as the primary…

Key to untying the Gordian knot known as the supply-chain crisis is recognizing and addressing unreasonable business practices by ocean carriers.  Some of these practices can likely be attributed to consolidation, and a recent report by Commissioner Carl Bentzel, Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), finds the shipping container (“containerization”) was a key factor in this…

Perhaps the last big initiative that has a chance to be agreed to by both chambers of Congress  before the midterm election usurps the agenda is “China competition legislation.” The Senate and House have approved two separate bills per this broad theme, with the anchor provision in each being $52 billion to incentivize companies to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities…

To address the ocean carrier supply chain crisis and high cost of shipping containers, IHA is part of a broad coalition of business groups working to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act (OSRA), which is a “Shippers Bill of Rights” to give importers and exporters much greater legal standing and the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) more tools to deal with unreasonable ocean…

When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, the focus of Title III in the law was, and still is, providing accessibility for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations and commercial facilities.  Framers saw Title III’s language exclusively in terms of “brick and mortar” and the internet wasn’t contemplated then. …