CBP and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) are planning to expand the Risk-Based Sampling at Ports of Entry (RBS POE) program to include new varieties of lettuce arriving at select U.S. ports of entry starting the week of March 31, according to a cargo systems message.
Customs attorney Dan Ujczo, who has contacts in the White House as well as clients who are major automakers, said he thinks the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico over migration and fentanyl will continue past April 2, and will be stacked with auto tariffs and the reciprocal levies.
Trade facilitation appears to be taking a back seat to trade enforcement, based on recent actions taken by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency to streamline federal operations, said a trade attorney during a March 26 webinar on tariffs and recent trade actions sponsored by Venable.
Customs attorney Dan Ujczo, speaking to an audience of automotive industry compliance officials hosted by the Automotive Industry Action Group, cautioned that if the listeners' companies are exporting auto parts from Mexico or Canada, they shouldn't assume that they have until May 3 before 25% tariffs are going to bite. (This is assuming the parts currently qualify for USMCA and therefore are avoiding the 25% tariffs imposed on exports from those countries under the guise of a national emergency on fentanyl smuggling and migration.)
California-based importer Evolutions Flooring and its owners, Mengya Lin and Jin Qian, agreed to settle claims they violated the False Claims Act by "knowingly and improperly evading customs duties" on multilayered wood flooring from China, DOJ announced. DOJ said the company and its owners will pay $8.1 million to settle the case, noting that whistleblower Urban Global will receive around $1.2 million of the proceeds.
President Donald Trump said at the White House that tariffs on imported autos, now at 2.5%, will go to 25%. He then signed an executive order, but that order was not yet posted online. The staffer who presented that order said the 25% tariff would be added to existing tariffs.
As the U.S., Mexico and Canada are poised to renegotiate the free trade agreement known as USMCA among the three countries, expect the U.S. to review the rules of origin and "tighten them" in favor of requiring a higher percentage of North American content, trade attorneys with Miller and Chevalier said on a March 25 webinar sponsored by public accounting firm Forvis Mazars.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
Most business interests argued that removing goods subject to Section 301 tariffs is not administrable, would damage the economy, and, if not abandoned, needs a long lead time to prepare for, in comments to CBP.
The Federal Maritime Commission is warning government contractors about “fraudulent solicitations” sent via email from people pretending to be from the FMC. The commission urged companies to check emails for an address that ends in “@fmc.gov.” Emails that don’t end in “@fmc.gov” means “the address did not originate at the Federal Maritime Commission,” it said.