iF October DIGITAL September-October 2020 | Page 40

that Mexico’s labor laws are reformed and enforced as the government of Mexico committed in the agreement and in recently enacted Mexican laws. Those mechanisms appear in the form of a Labor Chapter Petition and a Rapid Response Petition. The Chamber argues that, “as currently proposed, the procedures for receipt and review of petitions under the Labor Chapter would benefit greatly from the inclusion of additional safeguards to ensure that such petitions are objective and not subject to abuse or use for ulterior motives by the filing person.” The Chamber offers several recommendations to that end, including: The definition of the term Petition is too broad and will encourage specious and unfounded allegations in furtherance of grievances against private parties. To that end, the Chamber proposes that the administration include a requirement that the Petition be verified, or certified as true and correct under the penalties of perjury. Further, the Chamber urges that the administration clarify the term Petitioner—with respect to the Rapid Response Petition—to reflect an individual person or enterprise that has standing to seek the remediation of an alleged denial of rights at a facility. With respect to the Rapid Response Petition, the proposed Procedural Guidance does not exact sufficient specificity of the alleged denial of rights to provide the Committee sufficient information to make a determination whether or not to invoke the enforcement mechanism. The Chamber urges the administration to: 40 iF Magazine |September-October 2020 1) require certification of the petition as true and correct; 2) develop a standard form for the petition that solicits basic information and standardizes the process; 3) require a statement by the petitioner that sets forth the basic criteria to establish that they have standing to file a petition; 4) require the production of information and supporting evidence as a condition of receipt or processing of a Petition; 5) permit the owner of the facility that is the subject of a Rapid Response Petition to respond to the allegations as part of the process for receipt and review of the petition; and 6) require any other person providing information under the procedures to verify or certify under the penalties of perjury that such information is true and correct. The Chamber urges the administration to amend the proposed Procedural Guidance to prohibit persons and petitioners from making public the filing of a Rapid Response petition and accompanying information to safeguard against abuse of the process. With respect to the Rapid Response Petition process, the review of a petition as laid out in the proposed Procedural Guidance fails to include consultation with or notification of the owner of a facility that is the subject of the petition. This omission is fundamentally unfair to the enterprise that is at issue. Not only will including the enterprise in the process minimize possible constitutional challenges, but it will enhance the viability and credibility of the Rapid Response Petition process as a whole. Finally, the Procedural Guidance should establish a clear process to ensure that the Rapid Response petition process is handled in an objective manner by the appointed panelists; to that end, the Procedural Guidance should include a new and separate Section that establishes ethical obligations and procedures to avoid conflicts of interest by Rapid Response panelists in their participation in proceedings. For further information, please contact Senior Vice President of International Policy John Murphy ([email protected]). Chamber Urges EXIM to Renew Partnership with PEFCO In comments pursuant to a Federal Register notice, the U.S. Chamber urged the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) Board of Directors this week to approve a 25- year extension of its five-decade long partnership with the Private Export Funding Corporation (PEFCO). The Chamber’s comments read in part: EXIM has a longstanding and important relationship with PEFCO, a private-sector entity that supports U.S. exports by supplementing the financing available from commercial banks and other lenders. PEFCO shareholders include commercial banks, industrial companies, and financial services companies. PEFCO was established with the support of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and EXIM, and EXIM cooperates with PEFCO through a variety of agreements and maintains a broad measure of supervision over PEF- CO’s major financial management decisions... ECAs in other jurisdictions have government-provided funding mechanisms that perform the same role PEFCO does in partnership with EXIM. This is true for ECAs in Europe, Canada, Japan, and Korea as well as several very large state financial institutions in China. Without the EXIM-PEFCO partnership, U.S. small and medium-sized exporters would be placed in a particularly disadvantageous situation. For further information, please contact Senior Vice President of International Policy John Murphy ([email protected]).