Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 Act

Key Points

• The bill strengthens U.S. trade enforcement by updating antidumping and countervailing duty laws. It creates new frameworks for "successive investigations" so that when unfairly traded imports shift from one country to another, the government can act faster and build on prior findings rather than starting from scratch.
• New rules target cross-border subsidies and multinational corporations that use operations in multiple countries to dodge U.S. trade remedies. If a third country's government subsidizes production that ends up exported to the U.S., and the exporting country facilitates that subsidy, it can now be treated as a countervailable subsidy from the exporting country.
• The bill treats currency undervaluation as a countervailable subsidy. When a foreign government artificially keeps its currency cheap to make exports less expensive, the Commerce Department must investigate and can impose additional duties to offset the price advantage.
• Nonresident importers (foreign companies shipping goods into the U.S.) must maintain assets in the United States sufficient to cover all duties they may owe, with civil penalties up to $50,000 per violation for noncompliance.
• The bill expands the definition of "particular market situation" to include a wide range of foreign government actions that distort costs of production, such as state control of inputs, export restrictions, labor and environmental law non-enforcement, and government financial support to producers.
• The law applies to Canada and Mexico under USMCA, and several key provisions apply retroactively to investigations initiated on or after June 29, 2015, potentially reopening past trade cases.