The Senate Finance Committee scheduled a hearing to consider Katherine Tai to be the next U.S. trade representative. They will interview her Feb. 25 at 10 a.m.

House lawmakers in both political parties wrote to ask the State Department to provide a briefing on the agency’s implementation of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 and further steps the U.S. can take to block work on the Russian gas pipeline (see 2101190018). The members specifically asked for an update on the State Department’s “assessment of possible sanctionable activity” by vessels working on the pipeline, which companies are complying with the 30-day wind-down period the U.S. offered on sanctionable activity, the status of talks with allies and any proposals offered to the Biden administration to persuade the U.S. to forgo the sanctions.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the Bureau of Industry and Security isn’t complying with congressional oversight requirements because it hasn’t yet provided him with information about its China licensing process that he requested in November. After McCaul requested “detailed information” on how BIS licenses U.S. technology to Chinese entities, BIS told him the data was “too difficult and time-consuming to compile,” McCaul said Feb. 16. But McCaul said BIS allowed “the same information to be shared with the media,” referencing a Feb 11 Reuters report on Huawei restrictions (see 2102120008). McCaul called BIS’s actions “completely inappropriate and only furthers my concerns that BIS has not woken up to the growing threat of the Chinese Community Party.” A BIS spokesperson didn’t comment.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he doesn't expect U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai to have a hearing before mid-March. Because there's nothing controversial about her, he said, if she does get a hearing before Congress takes its Easter break, he thinks the full vote can also be done within days. Grassley told reporters on a Feb. 16 phone call that when he spoke with Tai recently, he told her that “I appreciated this administration's approach to China, working to get Japan, South Korea, Europe, Canada, and the United States on the same page with China.” He said he also told her the United Kingdom free trade negotiations “ought to have priority.”

The Combating Global Corruption Act, introduced by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Todd Young, R-Ind., and five other Democratic senators, would require the State Department to rank all foreign countries in three tiers based on their efforts to fight corruption. The bill, introduced Jan. 22, asks the Treasury and State departments to evaluate all foreigners “engaged in grand corruption” in tier 3 countries, to see if they should have Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act sanctions against them. Congress wants an annual report of who was evaluated, who was sanctioned, and why.

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., are asking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos questions about his company's contracts with Dahua Technology, a Chinese company that is on the Commerce Department Entity List and reportedly sells facial recognition software used to track Uighurs' movements. In a Feb. 10 letter, the senators asked, “When did you become aware of the reports of Dahua Technology’s participation in China’s state surveillance system against the Uyghurs and other groups targeted by the party-state?” They asked if officials knew Dahua Technology was on the Entity List when Amazon agreed to buy $10 million worth of cameras. “While buying equipment from Dahua Technology is not illegal, it does raise several questions for you as the Chief Executive of Amazon,” they said.

Twenty-two of Florida's 27-member House delegation, led by Democrat Rep. Darren Soto and Republican Rep. Bill Posey, told acting U.S. Trade Representative Maria Pagan that the European Union's 25% tariffs on grapefruit has hurt their constituents. “With the addition of a twenty-five percent retaliatory tariff on top of the existing 1.5 percent tariff, grapefruit exports from Florida have shrunk significantly,” their Feb. 5 letter said. Forty percent of Florida's fresh grapefruit production typically goes to the EU, the representatives said. Soto announced the letter in a news release Feb. 10. “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida growers have already been struggling to maintain their livelihoods. If immediate action is not taken and the United States loses the fresh grapefruit market in the EU, they could face even harsher consequences,” the letter said. EU officials have said they would be willing to lift the tariffs in the Boeing dispute for six months while the U.S. and the EU try to reach a settlement on aircraft subsidies.

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., and 12 co-sponsors introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the administration to send Congress a report identifying any foreign person or agency that “knowingly assists, sponsors, or provides significant financial or material support for, or financial or other services to” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The report should also identify senior members of those two groups. The bill would require a number of sanctions toward those people and groups, including no exports of controlled technologies, and says that the executive branch could block all financial transactions with the people and groups, if it chooses. The same language passed the House by voice vote in July 2019. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced a companion bill in the Senate during that Congress.

Fourteen senators from both sides of the aisle urged the State Department to increase sanctions pressure on Myanmar by targeting all senior officials, military officials and companies affiliated with the military-led coup last week. The U.S. not only should target leaders, the senators said in a Feb. 5 letter, but also consider sanctioning “companies and conglomerates” controlled by the military. “There is no reason to believe Burma’s military leaders will return the country to democratic rule without strong and sustained international pressure,” the senators said, led by Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top members. Coordinate sanctions with allies “as soon as possible” and convince the United Nations to investigate human rights violations related to the coup, the letter said. “Only strong, sustained, and multilateral pressure is likely to change the behavior” of Myanmar’s military, the senators wrote.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced the U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 to establish normal trade relations. “Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s. To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership,” he said in a Feb. 5 press release. The U.S.-Cuba Trade Act of 2021 would repeal the Helms-Burton Act and the Cuban Democracy Act, and other provisions that affect trade, investment and travel with Cuba. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., are cosponsors of the bill. Members of Congress have been introducing bills to lift the embargo for more than 10 years.