Another Pothole in the Road to Recovery
By Nate Herman
The atmosphere is finally changing. We can see signs of hope all around us. Families are booking summer trips, businesses are talking about in-person conferences and trade shows starting this fall, and President Biden has declared that, if we all work together, we can come together with family and friends to celebrate July 4th at barbeques and parties. As President Biden put it, we will not only be celebrating our country’s independence but also our country’s independence from the coronavirus.
We believe summer will also bring good news for the industry on the trade front. With strong advocacy from TGA, we believe Congress will renew the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program before Congress goes on its August recess, if not earlier. We know GSP’s duty-free access for U.S. travel goods imports from Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other developing countries has been critical to help the industry move away from China, and the crippling tariffs on our industry caused by the U.S./China trade war. The January 1 expiration of GSP has hit the industry hard, at a time when we could least afford it. Any GSP renewal will be retroactive, which will enable the industry to get refunds of all of the import duties paid during GSP expiration.
As always, however, there are clouds on the horizon. And these clouds take the form of the shipping crisis facing the country. We need to be getting product into stores now so that product is there when families start shopping for their summer vacations and business people start shopping for their first business trip in over a year. Yet the delays at the ports could deny us our product just when we need it most.
That is why TGA is part of a growing coalition of businesses, shippers, truckers, and others urging Congress and the Biden administration to take action now. We need you and your colleagues to write your members of Congress to tell them to make sure the current crisis at the ports doesn’t stymie our long-sought economic recovery.
We have made it easy for you. Just go to https://truckeraction.com/campaign/detention-and-demurrage-is-breaking-our-supply-chain/. It only takes a couple of minutes.
Together, we will remove any barriers to the recovery of our industry and for the American economy.
For more information, please contact TGA’s Nate Herman at nate@travel-goods.org or 301-775-7633.