Regional News : MidWest

Ten House lawmakers representing districts on the southwestern border on Thursday urged the Senate to get moving on the stalled confirmation of Alan Bersin to be commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Baucus The Congressional Border Caucus expressed concern in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus that CBP is without a permanent leader at a time when securit...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it has amended its Farm Storage Facility Loan program to allow producers to build cold storage facilities to store fresh fruits and vegetables. The program is part of the USDA’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative and uses discretionary authority provided by the 2008 Farm Bill. “On-farm storage may cost a lot of build, but it can help ...

The U.S. House of Representatives sent to the Senate Wednesday a bill to extend Federal Aviation Administration programs through the end of June. Passage of the measure marks the 12th time FAA authorization has been extended since it was scheduled to expire Sept. 30, 2007. The current extension is scheduled to expire March 31. The short-term extensions are stopgap measures to keep avi...

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday provided relief for the underfunded Highway Trust Fund and extended funding authorization for surface transportation programs through the end of the year as part of a $17.6 billion jobs bill. The HIRE ACT, which includes tax cuts for those who hire unemployed, transfers $19.5 billion in interest foregone since 1998 from the general fund to the Highway Trust F...

Bunning Three weeks after standing in the way of an emergency bill to sustain unemployment benefits and highway programs for an extra 30 days, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky is blocking confirmation of two Obama administration nominees for trade-related posts. Michael Punke is President Obama's choice to be U.S. ambassador and permanent representative to the World Trade Organiza...

Kirk The U.S. and Indian governments announced an initiative to encourage small businesses in both countries to participate more in bilateral trade. The initiative, “Integrating U.S. and Indian Small Businesses into the Global Supply Chain,” is part of the “Framework for Cooperation on Trade and Investment,” signed by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Indian Minister of Commerce and I...

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will travel to Japan on April 5-9 to promote U.S. agricultural exports to the Asian country. Vilsack will meet with Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Hirotaka Akamatsu, as well as U.S. exporters and Japanese importers. “My mission on this trip will be to continue to push hard to open markets and to bolster an open, rules-ba...

Shipping line OOCL said in a customer advisory it would no longer provide chassis for container yard or store door shipments of import and exports originating or destined to facilities in or around Boston and Miami. "All motor carriers, either working as suppliers for OOCL or OOCL customers, must provide chassis for these shipments," the Hong Kong-based carrier said in an advisory to cust...

The International Air Transport Association this week cut in half its forecast for losses in 2010 but said the airline industry’s recovery is still mostly benefiting Asian and South American carriers. “Helped by the strong year end we have cut our estimate of 2009 net losses from $11 billion to $9.4 billion,” IATA said in its monthly economic update. “More significantly we now forecast sm...

The Association of American Railroads has named Thomas Farmer assistant vice president of security, responsible for working with individual railroads and federal oversight agencies on freight rail security. Farmer joins the railroad lobby from the Transportation Security Administration, where he was acting general manager for mass transit. He also was senior counsel for intermodal program...

Retailers polled on their supply chain activities during the 2009 peak season said low inventory levels last year did not negatively impact sales volume, according to a survey by Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium. Those polled said strategies most commonly used during the last peak season were: • Reduced inventory levels. • Increased emphasis on forecasting. • Improved planning...

Kirk The Obama administration’s initiative to double exports within five years is based on the premise that companies in the international marketplace grow faster, add jobs faster and pay higher wages, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in address to the National League of Cities on Tuesday. A critical part of the effort is to provide more counseling and other resources to make it ea...

The Department of Homeland Security is accepting applications from trade and transportation professionals interested in serving on the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee for a two-year term, expected to begin in early 2011. The panel provides industry input to DHS and Treasury Department on matters related to trade enforcement, border security, trade facilitation and department oper...

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission has received 13 ocean transportation intermediary license applications for review. The agency received a non-vessel-operating common carrier license application from Vinpac Container Line, Baldwin Park, Calif. (Norman Lok, president). The FMC received NVO-ocean freight forwarder license applications from Zust Bachmeier International, Humble, Texas ...

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said his office will release this month an extensive report shedding light on sanitary and phytosanitary rules around the world that are being used as unfair technical barriers to protect domestic agriculture interests from imports. “As tariff barriers fall, these non-tariff barriers are becoming some of the most difficult challenges our exporters face,”...

credits:Siemens AG, Munich/Berlin Stimulus grants designed to create wind power jobs are mostly going to foreign manufacturers to build wind farms in the United States, according to a report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University's School of Communications in Washington. The Energy Department has doled out more than $2 billion from the 2009 Recovery Act for renewabl...

U.S. exports continue to be a sign of strength in the economy as goods and services sold abroad increased 15.1 percent in January from the $123.9 billion value from the same month a year ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. On a monthly basis the trade deficit narrowed 6.6 percent to $37.3 billion between December 2009 and January. Exports were almost flat in January, dipping 0...

Obama President Obama, in an effort to stimulate U.S. economic growth, signed an executive order on Thursday for the federal government to “use every available federal resource in support” of his recently announced National Export Initiative. That order also created the Export Promotion Cabinet, which includes the secretaries of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, as well as ...

U.S. farmers are pressing Capitol Hill to approve recently proposed legislation to eliminate financing and travel restrictions affecting agricultural trade with Cuba. “If I can leave you with one thing to remember today, it is that the Cuban embargo is working; it is working against U.S. farmers and ranchers,” Bart Schott, first vice president of the National Corn Growers Association, tol...

Thirty senators are warning that U.S. dairy farmers and processors will be harmed by increased imports of dairy commodities from New Zealand that could result from upcoming talks to open up trade among several Asian nations. The United States and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are scheduled to conduct their first round of negotiations on a regional Asia-Pacific trade agreement later this m...

The U.S. government should develop a plan to better guide transportation policy and investment during the next decade instead of continuing to rely on annual budgets based on wish lists from various constituencies, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last month. Rendell Rendell spoke during a session of the National Governors Association annual meeting abo...

The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday to reimburse about 2,000 Department of Transportation employees who were laid off for two days without pay when the department’s legal authority to spend money expired on March 1. Congress passed emergency legislation to extend spending authority for another 30 days and subsequently passed a jobs bill that included an extension of spend...

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed the 2010 American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act (H.R. 4213), which includes legislation providing for a one-year retroactive extension of the biodiesel tax incentive. Expiration of the tax incentive on Dec. 31 has essentially caused the production and use of biodiesel in the United States to cease. Structured as a federal excise tax credit...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has adopted as a final rule, with changes, an interim rule that requires inspection of Canadian grown fruits and vegetables imported into the United States. The rule also removes the user fee exemption for certain commercial vessels, trucks, railcars and planes, as well as international airline passengers ente...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said it’s proposing to allow, under certain conditions, imports of all varieties of Fuji apples from Japan into the United States. Based on recently completed research, the agency has determined that the measures in place for Fuji (Malus domestica) apples imported into the United States from Japan would be eff...

Many U.S. agriculture producers and manufacturers are losing significant export sales to Mexico because of tariffs that country imposed after Congress last year nixed a cross-border trucking program designed to fulfill free trade obligations, business groups said Tuesday. Representatives for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Potato Co...

Kenco Logistics Services, through its subsidiary Kal-Serv, has formed a joint venture with Schnellecke of America, called Team 3 Logistics, to provide logistics services to support automotive production in the U.S. Southeast. Schnellecke, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, is an established logistics services provider to automakers in Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. The ...