CBP has posted to its Web site an updated version of its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) road event schedule. CBP also issued an administrative message announcing upcoming ACE e-Manifest outreach events. These documents announce 9 events that have been added since BP's most recent update on ACE events:

The International Trade Administration (ITA) frequently issues notices on antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance as they concern actions that occur after an order is issued and neither announce nor cause any changes to an order's duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective period. The ITA also issues other notices which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its preliminary results of the following antidumping (AD) duty administrative reviews:

CBP has issued administrative messages on a number of antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty actions, many of which (marked by an * in the action column) were previously published in the Federal Register by the International Trade Administration (ITA) and summarized in International Trade Today.

CBP has posted to its Web site a notice announcing a "weekly" special import quota of 23,276,125 kg for upland cotton purchased not later than December 26, 2006 and entered under HTS 9903.52.25. The quota period is September 28, 2006 through March 26, 2007; the opening date is September 28, 2006 at 1:00 p.m. EDT, or its equivalent in other time zones.

The U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA) has reported that Senators Schumer and Graham have asked the Senate leadership to schedule a vote on their bill that would impose a 27.5% punitive duty on imports of Chinese-made goods (S. 295) before the Senate's recess at the end of September 2006. (See ITT's Online Archives or 07/08/05 news, 05070805, for previous BP summary of S. 295.) (USA-ITA memo, dated 09/20/06, www.usaita.com.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued its weekly tariff rate quota (TRQ)/tariff preference level (TPL) commodity report as of September 18, 2006. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, tuna, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa powder, tobacco, certain BFTA, CAFTA-DR, JFTA, MFTA, NAFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, CAFTA-DR, CBTPA, MFTA, NAFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA (Chile FTA) TPLs and TRQs for qualifying apparel and/or other textile articles, the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc. (CBP's weekly TRQ/TPL commodity report, dated 09/18/06, available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/import/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site notices announcing the opening of the tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on cotton and cotton card strips provided for under HTS Chapter 52, Additional U.S. Notes (AUSNs) 5 and 9, respectively, for the period September 20, 2006 through September 19, 2007. According to CBP, these TRQs open on September 20, 2006.

A federal court said the Ga. PSC erred in interpreting some phrases in FCC orders relating to interconnection audit rights as mandates, not suggestions. The U.S. Dist. Court, Atlanta was ruling on BellSouth’s appeal of a 2004 PSC order upholding NuVox’s right to reject a BellSouth request to audit interconnection traffic. The interconnection pact provided that BellSouth could do an annual traffic audit at its own expense to verify NuVox was using its enhanced extended loops (EELs) primarily for local exchange traffic. But when BellSouth in March 2004 gave NuVox the required 30 days’ notice of an audit, NuVox balked and went to the PSC. It told the PSC an FCC June 2002 order required that BellSouth first “demonstrate a concern” that NuVox was violating EEL usage terms, then hire an independent 3rd party to do the audit. The PSC sided with NuVox, approving independent audits but only on selected EELs where it felt BellSouth showed grounds for concern. It added the “demonstrate concern” and “independent audit” curbs to the companies’ contract. When the PSC refused to reconsider, BellSouth went to federal court, claiming the PSC imposed unlawful, unjustified limits on its contractual right to audit NuVox EEL traffic. The federal court agreed in Case 1:04-CV-2790-WSD. It said the 2002 FCC audit order provided general guidelines to states for regulating interconnection audits, but in language clearly casting them as suggestions, not mandates. The PSC also raised a state law argument, that Ga. contract law automatically incorporates all other applicable laws into an agreement unless unwanted legal provisions explicitly are excluded. But the court said the PSC interpretation of state contract law would deny BellSouth and CLECs their federal right to accept or reject portions of federal law by what they choose to write into their agreement.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted a courtesy notice to its Web site announcing that the global refined sugar tariff-rate quota (TRQ) that reopened on August 7, 2006 filled on September 8, 2006 at 4:01 p.m.