Proclamation Signed on WCO HTS Changes, Effective Early Feb 2012
On December 29, 2011, President Obama signed a Proclamation to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for the World Customs Organization-recommended tariff changes that are taking effect internationally on or about January 1, 2012. As this Proclamation was signed "late", and takes effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, the earliest it could take effect for imports into the U.S. is February 1, 2012 (if it were published as early as January 3, 2012).
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Changes to be in ITC report. The Annexes containing the WCO-recommended HTS changes will not be attached to the Proclamation or published in the Federal Register. Instead, they will be posted as a report on the International Trade Commission Web site (available here) in the near future.
Also to be in official online & print 2012 HTS. In addition, the WCO-recommended HTS changes will be incorporated into the ITC's "official" online 2012 HTS, once it is posted (which is expected at the time the Proclamation takes effect). The changes will also be incorporated into the Government Printing Office's (GPO) subscription version of the paper 2012 HTS.
(See ITT's Online Archives 11122708 and 11123015 for initial list and corrections to 484(f) statistical changes for the 2012 HTS. See ITT's Online Archives 11122318 for summary of the ITC's online "preliminary" version of the 2012 HTS (which does not reflect the WCO changes), available here.
See ITT's Online Archives 11122017 for summary detailing the WCO-recommended tariff changes (affecting products in 54 HTS chapters, including many food and agricultural items), which states that these changes are required to be "substantially rate neutral.")