ENFORCE Act Introduced in House

October 3, 2011

On September 23, 2011, Congressman Billy Long (D-MO) introduced H.R. 3057, the Enforcing Orders and Reducing Customs Evasion Act of 2011 (ENFORCE). The ENFORCE Act targets foreign companies who illegally evade payments when importing products into the United States and aims to prevent blatant duty evasion. Senator Wyden (D-OR) introduced S. 1133, the Senate version of the Enforce Act on May 26, 2011. The ENFORCE Act would establish a rapid-response timeline within which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would be required to respond to duty evasion allegations. CBP would have 90 days to determine if a reasonable basis exists to believe an importer is evading an antidumping or countervailing duty order, and if an affirmative preliminary determination is made, the law would require cash deposits to be made on entries of merchandise for the remainder of the investigation. Additionally, the legislation creates a framework to investigate foreign goods that are purposely misidentified, and allows domestic companies to petition CBP to investigate suspected illegal practices and deploy resources to ports where evasion is most common.

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