President Donald Trump said that although the 25% tariffs on steel, and the recently hiked aluminum tariffs, have "helped provide critical price support" to domestic producers, the rates are not high enough to enable them "to develop and maintain the rates of capacity production utilization that are necessary for the industries' sustained health and for projected national defense needs." So those rates will increase to 50% at 12:01 a.m. EDT June 4.
President Donald Trump's announcement that he would double Section 232 tariffs on aluminum, alongside steel, to 50% -- when the vast majority of imported aluminum was duty-free until March 12 -- drew warnings from the largest aluminum trade group.
Importer FCMT filed a trio of complaints at the Court of International Trade last week challenging CBP's appraisement of its apparel entries. In all three cases, the importer argued that CBP failed to use the products' transaction value to appraise the merchandise and that CBP engaged in an "arbitrary and fictitious appraisement" of the merchandise (FCMT v. United States, CIT #s 21-00242, -00243, -00247).
As importers, customs brokers and attorneys feel whiplash from the ever-shifting changes in U.S. tariff policy, one particular issue that these stakeholders will continue to grapple with over the coming months is ensuring that importers understand and comply with all the regulations on country of origin, according to experts speaking on a May 30 webinar sponsored by the International Trade Institute titled "Rules, Risk and Reality: How EU Exporters Can Navigate the New US Trade Era."
The Court of International Trade on May 27 entered default judgment against importer Rayson Global and its owner Doris Cheng in a customs penalty case after previously denying the government's bid for default judgment. In its second attempt to secure default judgment, the U.S. further defended its claim that the merchandise at issue is valued at nearly $3.4 million (United States v. Rayson Global, CIT # 23-00201).
The Commerce Department, after suggesting that the import of semiconductors, products containing semiconductors, and equipment and inputs used to make chips could be making the U.S. vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, is now hearing from dozens of stakeholders who say the administration has it completely backwards. Time after time, in more than 150 submitted comments for the Section 232 investigation, stakeholders said imposing tariffs is what would lead to shortages, manufacturing woes, and a loss of competitiveness in the design and manufacture of chips.
CBP will soon seek Office of Management and Budget approval for a series of recently announced changes to its Global Business Identifier pilot, according to a notice released May 27. That includes an expansion of identifiers used in the pilot, as well as of entities involved. Comments are due July 28, and summaries of the comments will be included along with the submission to OMB.
CBP announced in a May 27 cargo systems message that the ACE support biweekly trade call "has been discontinued until further notice." The agency didn't give a reason for the halt in service.
The Commerce Department slightly increased the antidumping duty rate applicable to some exporters of oil country tubular goods (OCTG) from India (A-533-857), it said in a correction to a notice of final results of the antidumping duty administrative review for the period Sept. 1, 2022, through Aug. 31, 2023, originally published May 13. The agency had set a zero percent AD duty cash deposit rate for Surya Roshni Ltd., but erroneously stated that the “all-others” cash deposit rate was zero percent, it said. That “all-others” cash deposit rate, which applies to all Indian exporters that have never received individual rates for their exports of OCTG from India, should be 0.6%, Commerce said. (See 2505120010 for a summary of the original final results of this review.)
On May 22, the FDA posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of: