The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Sept. 5:
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Sept. 4:
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Aug. 31:
The Commerce Department confirmed that the Aug. 29 proclamations on exclusions from Section 232 tariffs are retroactive to the date the exclusion request was accepted (see 1808300004), rather than the date of posting for public comments. "For properly submitted exclusion requests, it is the filing date," a Commerce Department spokesman said.
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Aug. 24:
The National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones recently wrote to Foreign-Trade Zones Board Executive Secretary Andrew McGilvray as part of the group's effort to address the "unintended and injurious impact" of section 201 and 301 tariffs on manufacturers in U.S. FTZs. NAFTZ is trying to get the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to resolve issues involving the USTR's trade remedy language that results in unfair treatment of goods manufactured within FTZs (see 1808220034). "We respectfully request that the Foreign-Trade Zones Board communicate immediately with USTR to help resolve this increasingly-damaging situation for American FTZ manufacturers," he said.
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Aug. 22:
A report on the national security issues related to imported automobiles and auto parts probably won't be ready for release in August, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The Commerce Department started a Section 232 investigation in May on the impact of imported cars on the domestic auto industry and national security (see 1805240002). Ross, who previously said he expected a report in August, noted the progress with NAFTA and the European Commission. Commerce has 270 days to issue the report and Ross didn't give any other information on when to expect the report.
The Foreign-Trade Zones Board issued the following notice for Aug. 20:
ATLANTA -- The Trump administration is not operating off a set benchmark for when to lift Section 232 tariffs on iron and steel products, and any decision to end the duties is at the discretion of the president himself, said Earl Comstock, director of the Commerce Department’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, at CBP's 2018 Trade Symposium on Aug. 14. Though Commerce in its Section 232 report set a threshold of 80 percent steel industry capacity utilization to judge the sector’s health, President Donald Trump in imposing the tariffs was “very careful to say that we’re not looking at a specific thing,” Comstock said. “We’re not going to be measuring and say when it hits 80 percent, boom, everything disappears,” he said. The capacity utilization rate could be lower or higher. “It’s really up to the president to make that determination,” considering the overall health of the industry and its ability to stand on its own, as well as whether arrangements have been reached with other countries to address issues such as overcapacity, Comstock said.