The Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 would streamline the tariff process against repeat offenders that are skirting American laws.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday reintroduced legislation that would modernize trade rules and help American workers and businesses push back against repeat offenders of U.S. trade law.  

The Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 (LTPFA) would streamline the application of tariffs against countries that have gotten creative in avoiding them. The bill, first introduced in the last Congress, is co-sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) in the Senate and by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) and Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) in the House.

So, streamlining the applications of tariffs. What does that mean?

In effect, it means updating American trade enforcement tools so they’re useful in the 21^st century.

The LTPFA would expedite the U.S. tariff process if a country ships goods to the U.S. through another country to avoid paying anti-dumping or countervailing duties (AD/CVD). It happens more than you’d think. Speeding up the application so these tariffs stick would begin to tackle this “whack-a-mole” problem, saving American workers and businesses serious amounts of time and money.

The bill also establishes the concept in trade law of “successive investigations,” so American companies or workers won’t have to file a new trade case when the production moves to another country.

It would also address cross-border subsidization, in which foreign governments subsidize their own manufacturers in third country markets; give the Commerce Department additional tools to combat cost distortion; and clarify the Commerce Department’s authority for trade enforcement proceedings.

These kinds of enforcement tune-ups would be a big deal for the American steel and aluminum industries, whose markets are beset with duplicative instances of unfairly traded imports.

That’s why the United Steelworkers have persistently called for the LTPFA’s passage, and no less than U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai backed it before the Senate Finance Committee last year.  

“I just want to emphasize that most of our trade enforcement tools date back to the 1970s and the 1980s, and it is critical that we maintain those tools. But, over time, as the global economy has evolved around us, our tools have not kept up,” Tai said. “And so, the updates and the enhancements that are in the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 are exactly in the spirit of what we need right now, which is the tailoring of a toolset and expansion of a toolset that’s going to be up to the task of meeting the challenges that we’re facing today.”

This bill is an excellent idea, said Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul, and necessary if we want the industrial policies enacted in the last few years to truly succeed:

The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have helped to spark an American manufacturing renaissance, but investment in domestic manufacturing is a only first step. Modernizing our trade tools would give our hardworking men and women a fair shot at competition. Industrial policy cannot succeed without effective trade enforcement.

Read more about the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0 here.