CBP Chief Operating Officer John Sanders will take over as CBP commissioner in an acting capacity while CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan is the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS said in a news release.
Algeria recently lifted an import ban it imposed in 2018 on about 850 products, replacing it with temporary safeguard duties on more than 1,000 food and industrial goods, according to an April 12 notice from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service. About 60 percent of those goods are food products, the notice said, with most of them being “processed and high value products.” While many of the goods U.S. exporters send to Algeria -- including “bulk and intermediate commodities” such as wheat, barley, corn, rice and soybeans -- are not included on Algeria’s temporary safeguard list, the list does include “tree nuts,” a “key” U.S. export to Algeria, the notice said. Algeria imported “an average of $33 million of tree nuts (almonds, walnuts and pistachios) from the United States” over the 2009-2017 calendar years, the notice said. The safeguard duties list shows “tree nuts are subject to 30 percent additional tax [i.e., the safeguard duty] to be added to the existing 30 percent custom duties plus the 19 percent of Value-Added Tax (VAT),” the notice said.
In the April 16 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Recent editions of Mexico's Diario Oficial list trade-related notices as follows:
Canada revised its list of steel and aluminum goods from the U.S. exempted from tariffs on the products that were imposed in response to U.S. Section 232 tariffs on the metals, the Department of Finance Canada said on its website. Among the changes are nearly 100 new items on the Schedule 3 list, which is "limited to specifically listed importers, for specified periods and subject to applicable conditions as prescribed." The changes became effective April 15, it said.
An executive for a waste recycling company was sentenced to three years in prison after he illegally resold dangerous electronic hazardous waste to companies that then exported it overseas, according to an April 12 notice from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance announced tariff rate quotas for certain dairy imports for the Japanese fiscal year that runs from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, according to an April 10 notice from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service. The TRQs cover “natural cheese for processing, skimmed milk powder, evaporated milk, butter and butteroil, and certain whey products, ” the notice said. Among several changes are those affecting imports of natural cheese used in processed cheese: Each Japanese importer is permitted to import natural cheese tariff-free up to 2.5 times “the volume of domestic cheese it uses for the production of processed cheese,” the notice said.
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls has deactivated International Traffic in Arms Regulations "exemption code 22 CFR 126.5C," CBP said in an April 16 message. That section of the federal code only says "reserved." The exemption code "will not be accepted in Electronic Export Information" submissions effective immediately, CBP said. "Appendix O of the Automated Export System Trade Interface Requirement" will also be updated to remove the code, it said.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published a technical notice for OFAC’s “sanctions lists data files,” according to an April 16 notice. On May 16, OFAC will be expanding the “program” field “found in OFAC’s legacy data files (DEL, PIP, FF and CSV) from 50 to 200 characters," the notice said. Questions should be directed to O_F_A_C@treasury.gov or the tech support hotline at 1-800-540-6322.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for April 8-12 in case they were missed.