CBP's UFLPA Guidance Brings 'Clarity' on Complicated UFLPA Admissibility Submissions, Lawyer Says
CBP’s recently issued guidance on Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act enforcement (see 2302230042) provides “much needed clarity” around UFLPA applicability review submissions, and marks an attempt by the agency to “create structure for a process that has quickly buried both importer and agency under burdens of unfathomable intricacy and complexity,” customs lawyer John Foote said in a Feb 24 blog post.
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The traceability documents CBP had been requiring from importers to prove non-applicability of UFLPA “are frequently hundreds of pages in length, may take dozens of hours to collect, and dozens of hours for CBP to review,” Foote said. The guidance is CBP’s most detailed yet on “not only what exactly CBP wants to see, but how it wants to see it,” he said.
For lawyers and other service providers trying to help companies navigate detentions, “they’re a road atlas to a city we’ve been trying to explore while blindfolded,” Foote said.
One surprise to Foote from the guidance is CBP’s reversal on accepting DNA or isotopic testing to prove the absence of Xinjiang cotton, he said. “The agency has previously insisted that any such scientific proof be duplicated with more onerous documentation of the actual origin of non-Xinjiang origin cotton fiber. In an apparent shift, CBP now answers the question of whether DNA traceability or isotopic testing can be used as evidence the original cotton fiber was not from the XUAR with a resounding, one-word 'Yes', plus some reasonable conditions,” Foote said.