Congress moves to shine light on cross-border cargo flows
S. 1259 — Manifest Modernization Act of 2025 · Filed by Bill Cassidy (R-LA) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 2, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends the Tariff Act of 1930 to require public disclosure of manifest information (cargo details, origin, classification) for vehicles and aircraft entering the U.S., matching existing disclosure rules for vessels. It expands the definition of 'aircraft' to include civil, military, and public aircraft, and takes effect 30 days after enactment.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a straightforward expansion of existing public-disclosure requirements to a new category of cross-border transport (vehicles and aircraft). It is a transparency measure, not a regulatory carve-out or subsidy.
What the text implies
- Manifest disclosure may enable tracking of supply-chain vulnerabilities and dependencies, potentially informing national-security or industrial-policy discussions.
- Public cargo data could facilitate investigative journalism and NGO monitoring of labor, environmental, or sanctions compliance in international trade.
- Disclosure of tariff-schedule classifications may reveal pricing strategies or product sourcing patterns that some importers prefer to keep confidential.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Public disclosure of manifest information increases transparency in cross-border trade, enabling citizens, journalists, and researchers to monitor cargo flows, detect smuggling patterns, and hold government accountable for enforcement. The bill imposes no new costs on citizens and creates no new restrictions on their rights or remedies.
Named in the bill
Tariff Act of 1930, Section 431, Section 433, Section 434, 46 U.S.C. § 60105, Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 2 Democrats.
- Apr 2, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Apr 2, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Finance · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
9 lobbying clients named this bill on 13 disclosure filings across 4 quarters, Sep 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $6,052,150 in lobbying spend. A filing names 9 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 89% of bills with at least one filing.
Bill Cassidy, the sponsor, reported $1,329,254 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle. $2,000 of that came from 1 PAC tied to these lobbying clients.
- Fedex Corporation — $2,930,000 on 1 filing
- S&p Global Inc. (f/k/a Mcgraw Hill Financial Inc.) — $1,550,000 on 4 filings
- Bnsf Railway Company — $960,000 on 1 filing
- Fdd Action — $290,000 on 1 filing
- Dpwn Holdings (usa) Inc. (formerly Known As Deutsche Post World Net-usa, Inc.) — $117,150 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,998 characters) on Aug 13, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Sep 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress moves to shine light on cross-border cargo flows” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s1259 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.