Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act of 2024

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 9151. This legislation would create a task force within the Department of Justice to increase the prosecution of trade-related crimes.

Although DOJ already has dedicated personnel to enforce laws protecting Americans from illegal products, limited funding prevents prosecutors from doing more.

Americans are protected from trade crimes by a patchwork of national security laws, including the Tariff Act of 1930, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and many others. These studies protect against a wide variety of crimes that impact the health, safety, and financial security of Americans, from the importation of counterfeit goods to the commission of trade secret theft through economic espionage.

We have all heard stories about the most egregious cases: exploding counterfeit batteries that cause e-cigarettes to maim users, computer chips equipped with spyware in our product stream that endanger military secrets, handbags made with forced Uyghur labor passed off as fair-trade materials. These are terrible outcomes with clear victims, and United States law enforcement should ensure these cases never happen again.

Other trade crimes may not have a clear victim or a defined perpetrator, but they are equally pernicious. For example, cyber intrusions can risk a company's trade secrets without their knowledge. They may never become aware of the data leak, but a foreign competitor can use the intellectual property to unfairly compete with the targeted company.

Counterfeit products that look identical to a brand's trademark can cause irreparable damage to a small business or designer. Victims can suffer reputational damage, lose the opportunity to break into a specific market, and otherwise lose revenue that would have gone to them.

The deluge of counterfeits and the unique way trade crimes are perpetrated have made it increasingly difficult for prosecutors at the Department of Justice to enforce our laws. H.R. 9151 would help the government prevent trade loss by creating a task force to identify, investigate, and prosecute crimes that hurt Americans in every industry.

This legislation has been a bipartisan effort, and I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on the select committee on China, the Appropriations Committee, and the Judiciary Committee for creating carefully negotiated legislation that, if properly funded, would help the Department of Justice better pursue their objectives.

Without such funding, however, the myriad investigators, prosecutors, and support staff envisioned for the task force will never be hired. You cannot increase trade crime enforcement without increasing the number of prosecutors working on the issue, and you cannot increase the number of staff handling trade crimes without more funding.

Over and over again, I have heard my colleagues across the aisle call for Congress to defund agencies across the Federal Government, especially the Department of Justice, yet in the same breath they ask them to do more to protect Americans. You cannot withhold funding from agencies that keep us safe and then act surprised when they do not have enough people to do the job.

I sincerely hope we commit dedicated appropriations to this program and all aspects of DOJ in the days and months ahead. I support this legislation, and I support funding this legislation. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' when it comes to a vote.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ivey).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Over the last year, the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet has held multiple bipartisan subcommittee hearings regarding the IP and trade crimes threat posed by the Chinese Government. Witnesses have testified about the flood of trade crimes and the inability of our government's limited resources to prevent, detect, and prosecute violations of the law.

This legislation, if adequately funded, would help address these concerns. It is a small step in the right direction, but it will be a significant step nonetheless, so long as we complete the puzzle by properly funding the program through the appropriations process.

Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 9151, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 9151) to strengthen the Department of Justice's enforcement against trade-related crimes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 9151.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, U.S. trade policy is a vital tool to protect American businesses and workers, ensure American competitiveness, and achieve our foreign policy objectives.

For U.S. trade policy to be effective, we have to actually enforce the laws implemented in the United States' policy. H.R. 9151 would establish the structure needed at the Department of Justice to go after criminals who perpetrate trade crimes.

These crimes include trade fraud, tariff and duty evasion, illegal smuggling, trade-based money laundering, trafficking in counterfeit goods, and many more.

Today, criminal enterprises and bad actors, predominantly based in the People's Republic of China, are breaking U.S. trade laws with impunity. This fraud has seriously undermined our trade policy.

Additionally, in just fiscal year 2023, U.S. authorities seized over $2.7 billion of counterfeit goods, with the PRC accounting for more than 80 percent of those seizures. Those seizures reflect billions of dollars stolen from U.S. businesses and workers, which undermines the trade policies designed to protect them.

In the past 2 years, law enforcement has also identified $750 million worth of goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang and Uyghur autonomous region. These goods carry significant risk of having been produced by forced labor and are illegal to import into the United States.

We must do more to punish the criminals who are breaking our trade laws and inflicting serious harm on our economy. H.R. 9151 will enable the DOJ to dedicate specialized personnel to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.

I thank all the sponsors for their hard work, as well as the hard work by the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party to put together this excellent legislation.

I also thank the Judiciary Committee for bipartisan efforts that led to this bill being reported by voice vote, demonstrating that we can work across party lines to advance trade policies that protect Americans.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 9151 and give teeth to our trade policies. I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Hinson).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar).

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, and I am prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act. This bill puts American industry, American manufacturing, and American workers first.

For decades, companies operating under the control of the Chinese Communist Party in the People's Republic of China have systematically violated U.S. trade laws.

The CCP's illicit trade practices, including duty evasion, transshipment, market flooding, forced labor, and fraud, are deliberately designed to take advantage of American workers and businesses, lowering wages, forcing manufacturers to close their doors, and gutting our rural manufacturing towns.

For example, the select committee on China uncovered trade fraud by Chinese auto manufacturer Qingdao Sunsong. Sunsong was using transshipment to evade U.S. tariffs, forcing an Illinois company to lay off a quarter of their workforce.

Sunsong is far from the only Chinese company taking action to exploit our trade system to bolster China's nonmarket economy, crippling American industry and manufacturing, threatening workers' wages and livelihoods, and enabling slave labor.

However, despite the sheer volume of trade-related crime, the Department of Justice remains inadequately equipped to effectively detect, investigate, and then prosecute such offenses.

While tariffs are one tool in our toolkit to level that playing field, we also must enforce our trade laws and hold China accountable for repeated violations that have a catastrophic impact on American workers and American industry.

By strengthening the Trump DOJ's ability to detect and prosecute international trade crimes, my bipartisan bill will ensure that Communist China and other perpetrators are criminally liable for illicit activity and that those penalties are properly enforced. This

will help to reshore domestic manufacturing and provide opportunities for our American workers.

I am also very proud to have the support of the China select committee chairman, Chairman Moolenaar, and Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi on this bill. I deeply appreciate their partnership and collaboration on this. I also thank Chairman Jordan and Ranking Member Nadler for their support of this key bill on the Judiciary Committee.

To close, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and support American workers in the process.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 9151, the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act.

As the complexities of international trade intensify, abusive practices and circumvention of trade rules escalate commensurately. Trade crimes impair our economy, disadvantage our workers, disrespect our consumers, and offend our national sensibilities.

To halt these practices, we must reinforce America's capacity to identify, investigate, and interdict these crimes and empower the Department of Justice to prosecute the perpetrators.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to co-lead and be an original cosponsor of H.R. 9151, which is bipartisan legislation that would achieve these objectives.

I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Representatives Hinson, Krishnamoorthi, Moolenaar, and all the other co-leads and cosponsors, for joining together to confront this challenge.

I especially appreciate my colleagues' receptivity to my suggestions about the trade crime unit's structure, concentrating on a national team based at Main Justice with the ability to deploy experts, as needed, to ports of entry around the country where trade crimes are occurring.

By focusing resources at Main Justice, we will expand our core competencies in confronting these crimes nationwide so that we will retain the upper hand, even if perpetrators redirect their activities to a different location in the United States.

This bill would establish a trade crimes unit at DOJ to take aim against a litany of crimes that are prevalent in international trade, including crimes resulting from products made by use of forced labor, sellers abusing the de minimis exemption, foreign exporters evading duties and tariffs by shipping products through third-party nations, and products that violate safety and health rules.

By creating and funding a trade crimes unit at DOJ, this bill would equip our country with expert investigators and attorneys who are dedicated to safeguarding our people, our jobs, and our economy.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of Congresswoman Hinson's bill, the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act.

Today, Chinese companies habitually violate U.S. trade laws. They go around our country's tariffs, and this harms U.S. manufacturers, undermines our workers, and diminishes American competitiveness.

Last August, during a roundtable in Wisconsin, the Select Committee on the CCP heard from Americans across industries on how Chinese companies are breaking the law and decimating their operations. It is clear from these testimonies that the civil penalties rarely imposed on companies caught circumventing U.S. trade laws were not enough to stop CCP-sponsored trade fraud.

Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi, Congresswoman Hinson, and the bipartisan members of the select committee recommended last year that Congress pass legislation to criminally enforce trade crimes as a true deterrent to the CCP's coordinated economic coercion.

Today's legislation takes that recommendation and turns it into action. We have solicited feedback from industry, worked closely with the Department of Justice, and coordinated with the standing committees here in the House to develop this robust legislation before us today.

As the House considers this bill, I am committed to working with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to ensure the prosecutors hired to criminally enforce our trade laws are fully funded. In the face of China's economic onslaught against our country, we must ensure those prosecutors have the resources they need to enforce tariffs, protect American workers, and stop the CCP from taking advantage of the United States.

I again thank Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi and also Representative Hinson for their leadership and for working with committee staff on this key bill. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and support American manufacturing.