Nominee: CPSC must catch up with e-commerce

President Trump’s pick for the Consumer Product Safety Commission tells the Senate Commerce Committee that the agency still thinks in terms of “brick-and-mortar retail.”    President Trump’s nominee for commissioner to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) told Senate Commerce Committee members during his nomination hearing on Wednesday that the agency needs to catch up with the e-commerce landscape.
   “The agency must address e-commerce,” said Peter Feldman, former senior counsel to the committee. “The CPSC is keyed to traditional distribution models and brick-and-mortar retail and it must determine what its role will be in the 21st century economy.”
   The agency is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death related to the use of thousands of consumer products under its jurisdiction. According to CPSC, deaths, injuries and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the country more than $1 trillion a year.
   CPSC, like other federal agencies engaged with trade, is grappling with how to oversee the influx of international e-commerce shipments entering the U.S. in recent years. 
   According to a report released earlier this year by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of Americans purchasing goods online increased from 22 percent to 79 percent since 2000.
   “At the end of fiscal year 2017, one port that has an express consignment hub received an estimated 25 million predominantly informal and de minimis (packages declared at less than $800) value shipments. In comparison, this same facility averaged 2.4 million shipments between 1997 and 1999,” the CBP report said.
  To CPSC, the below de minimis values mean these often small shipments are entering U.S. commerce with much less information and may hide harmful attributes from unsuspecting consumers.  
   “To correct this vulnerability, CBP must put into place new protocols that allow for effective identification, enforcement and deterrence of trade violations in the e-commerce environment,” the CBP report said.
   Feldman told the Senate Commerce Committee that CPSC must also “modernize its data capabilities” and further advance product safety through stronger engagement with industry and agency stakeholders. 
   “Many consider CPSC to be among the least transparent agencies in the federal government,” he said. “That is unacceptable and CPSC must improve its outreach to stakeholders about its expectations.”