Heim to Pac-West: Business as Usual for Conflict Minerals Law
With the Dodd-Frank Act a moving target in Congress these days, what is a fastener distributor to do?
“Everything is going to be the same right now as it was last year,” consultant Lawrence Heim told participants of a webinar conducted by the Pacific-West Fastener Association.
“Right now, it’s business as usual.”
Heim noted that over the past few weeks there has been “a lot of interesting news” about conflict minerals.
In February several news outlets reported on what was claimed to be a leaked draft Executive Order that would suspend Dodd-Frank Section 1502 for a two year period by claiming it is in the U.S. national security interest to eliminate U.S. corporate due diligence activities concerning tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (3TG).
But the Executive Order has not been finalized by the administration of President Donald Trump, leading Heim to advise fastener distributors to proceed as if nothing has changed.
“It’s highly doubtful that there will be any action by the Securities and Exchange Commission before the May 31 deadline,” Heim stated.
In the past year, customer expectations have changed, according to Heim. He said fewer customers are willing to accept a company-level declaration; more are demanding product level responses.
Customers may ask you to verify if certain “smelters and refiners determined to be questionable” are in your supply chain. If they are not, customers will want you to remove them from your list. But proceed with caution.
“You can’t eliminate things simply because you want to,” Heim warned.
If certain suppliers can’t be eliminated, customers will ask for a risk mitigation plan to eliminate bad smelters/refiners.
If fastener distributors get pushback from customers, they must be prepared to respond by either providing a product level Conflict Minerals Reporting Template (CMRT) or demonstrating a documented risk mitigation plan to eliminate smelters/refiners within six months.
Customer-specific obligations depend on contract and procurement standards. If the customer requires it, fastener distributors need to work with them. Heim advised talking with customer to see if they’re at all flexible on these requirements.
“Many distributors are in a difficult situation right now, because technically the Tier One suppliers are the distributors.” Web: pac-west.org
For ongoing updates about conflict minerals law compliance, follow @PacWestFastener on Twitter.
There are no comments at the moment, do you want to add one?
Write a comment