The House’s top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee introduced a bill that would impose new sanctions and export restrictions against foreign governments and people responsible for radio-frequency attacks against U.S. personnel abroad. The Havana Syndrome Attacks Response Act, introduced Aug. 3 by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, would sanction those who the president determines “knowingly directed or carried out these attacks,” which have caused brain injuries to U.S. personnel in Cuba and other countries. The bill would also require the U.S. to restrict certain exports -- including arms sales -- and export licenses for shipments to foreign governments behind the attacks. The export controls would be applied to shipments of items controlled under the Arms Export Control Act, licenses for items on the U.S. Munitions List and other exports pursuant to the Export Control Reform Act. The bill has 15 Republican co-sponsors.

The American Association of Port Authorities is thanking the Senate for the $2.25 billion dedicated to the Port Infrastructure Development Program, but in a letter it made public on Aug. 6, it says PIDP needs another $10 billion over five years.

A group of House Republicans called on the Commerce Department to add Chinese smartphone maker Honor Device Co. Ltd. to the Entity List and asked for a briefing with the agency’s End-User Review Committee to ensure the administration is “moving with enough speed” on export controls. Because Huawei sold Honor Device Co., the company can access technology that “should be restricted,” the lawmakers said in an Aug. 6 letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told an Atlantic Council webinar that although business executives have told the bipartisan Climate Caucus that they want a carbon tax, it's more likely that a carbon adjustment tax would come first in Congress. Coons, speaking Aug. 3, said, “It seems that we may actually be able to move first, to assessing what the regulatory price already is on carbon in our economy and setting a border carbon adjustment” tax. He said it makes sense to work on that now because Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union are all planning similar strategies.

Trade Promotion Authority, colloquially known as "fast track," expired in July, and the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are asking the Biden administration to talk to Congress about bringing TPA back. "Like you, we believe that with the right global trading rules in place, American workers and businesses not only can compete in the global economy -- they can win. And like you, we agree that the wrong thing to do in the face of these challenges 'is to put our heads in the sand and say no more trade deals,'" they wrote, quoting an essay by Joe Biden published in 2020.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill being debated in the Senate this week invests $17 billion in port infrastructure, according to a White House summary of the more than 2,000-page bill. That money would go to maintenance backlogs, emissions and congestion near ports, and for electrification and other low-carbon technologies at ports of entry. It also invests $25 billion in airports.

Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, applauded the Biden administration’s recent sanctions against the Cuban government and said he believes more are coming. Menendez, D-N.J., said the U.S. should impose more sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act for human rights violations, similar to the Treasury Department’s July 22 designations of Cuba’s defense minister and a defense agency (see 2107220055). “Secretary [Antony] Blinken has made clear the Administration will continue holding human rights abusers accountable,” Menendez said July 28. “I urge the Administration to consider additional Global Magnitsky designations.”

A Senate bill that would create an export certification system for Native American cultural items passed out of the Indian Affairs Committee July 28. The bill, which was introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., also has a House companion bill, called the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2021. In addition to the export certification system, it explicitly prohibits the export of Native American cultural items that were illegally obtained, and requires that the Interior Department convene a Native working group of Indian tribe and Native Hawaiian representatives “to provide advice on issues concerning the return of, and illegal trade in, human remains and cultural items.”

The House’s Republican Study Committee released a counterproposal to the Senate’s Endless Frontier Act that would call for a host of new sanctions against China, continue U.S. export control authorities and make some changes to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The committee’s Countering Communist China Act, released July 29, calls for broad U.S. sanctions actions, including designations against Chinese technology applications, various senior government officials, foreign people that steal U.S. intellectual property and “foreign persons that knowingly spread malign disinformation … for purposes of political warfare.” The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control would also be authorized to hire 10 new employees to “carry out activities of the Office associated with the People’s Republic of China.”

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., along with two other House Republicans, introduced a bill that would require the administration to impose sanctions on "persons who are knowingly responsible for or complicit in, or have directly or indirectly engaged in, supporting the illegal occupation of Tibet." The bill's text was published July 26. "In rejecting the seven-decade long illegal occupation of Tibet by the forces of the Chinese Communist Party, the United States of America would provide relief to a long-suffering people and reinforce its reputation as a strident defender of global human rights," the bill says. The bill says that the administration would be required to impose the sanctions within 180 days of the bill becoming law, unless the president says that not applying sanctions to a certain party is in the national interest of the U.S. In that case, he would have to give Congress a justification for the waiver.