WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders on Wednesday to bolster customs enforcement and bring more accountability to the federal workforce.
Trump signed the orders in the Oval Office, flanked by Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, and staffers.
The first order establishes more stringent rules for importers of record to follow. The White House notes these include:
increasing bonding requirements and requiring IORs to maintain at all times a minimum level of tangible domestic assets, bonding, or both;
subjecting foreign IORs to heightened requirements for formal entry;
authorizing only U.S. IORs to file informal entry;
imposing a “good standing” requirement on all IORs; and
increasing vetting procedures for all individuals and entities that conduct activities directly related to the importation of goods.
Scott said, under the order, the same principles that are applied to preventing illegal immigrants from entering the country are being applied to protect industry.
“Different countries and different people are undercutting our import-export rules, the tariffs to literally undermine American businesses, and we’re going to put a stop to it in the same way,” Scott said.
“We’re going to start holding trade accountable for bringing threatening things and threatening products into our country, just like we have on the rest of the border,” he added.
“So, Customs and Border Protection gets a lot of attention for the border wall, everything else. This is going to be basically the equivalent in the trade environment,” Scott continued.
Navarro called it a “$20-$30 billion a year” order.
“What we’re going to do here, the EO you’re going to sign, that’s about a $20-$30 billion a year EO you’re going to get because we are going to crack down… on fentanyl, we’re going to crack down on the unhealthy products, the counterfeits, and all of the tariff evaders,” he said.
“So this is a message to the world today when you sign this. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” he added.
The second order Trump signed allows for federal agencies to more easily fire government employees due to “poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives without lengthy procedural hurdles that often prevent accountability,” as the White House notes.
