The Chinese administration’s “systematic abuse of US trade law represents a clear and urgent threat to American industries and workers,” the lawmaker said.
Lawmakers reintroduced the bill and urged the government sector to step up efforts to tackle China’s unfair trade practices, including avoiding US tariffs.
Protecting American industries and workers from international trade crimes laws “eventually, China will avoid US trade laws for decades, avoiding obligations, and hold them liable through forced labor,” Hinson said at a press conference.
She said the law “helps stop these blatant violations and ensure that penalties are enacted meaningfully.”
The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in December 2024, but no law was enacted by the end of the 118th Congress.
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Committee chair John Mourenard (R-Mich.) and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) urged Greer to launch a USTR investigation into violations by Chinese-based officials.
Since the US began to impose high tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018, the “wide industry of PRC logistics companies has emerged,” boasts, “it boasts “sinking steel, aluminum products, clothing, stainless steel sinks” to the US and Europe through third countries, including iron, aluminum products, clothing, stainless steel sinks.”
Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi cited several examples of the transport of products from China, including automotive parts, textiles, cloth hangers, and fentanyl precursors.
In one example, Qingdao Sunsong, a Chinese high-tech auto parts company, revealed that it has made public that the main reason for establishing the facility in Thailand is to avoid higher tariffs on rubber hose assembly products exported to the US.
Hinson said at a press conference Wednesday that Sunsong’s tariff avoidance was “not an isolated event, but part of the CCP’s broader strategy to dominate the global market against the background of American workers, while committing a terrible slave labor violation.”
In another example, the letter states that all manufacturers except one of the US steel hangers had been destroyed by 2007 as a result of China’s dumping practices, and after the Commerce Department imposed an anti-dumping obligation on Chinese steel hangers in 2008, Chinese producers “were shifting from unfair trade to illegal trade, avoiding trade enforcement duties.”
The letter concludes that the Chinese administration’s “systematic abuse of US trade law and protection mechanisms through transshipment, forced labor and other illegal trade practices represent clear and urgent threats to American industries and workers.”
While acknowledging the actions of law enforcement to monitor and clarify these transshipment schemes, lawmakers called for stronger measures, saying current enforcement efforts “will remain insufficient to hold perpetrators accountable and block future violations of the US Trade Act.”
