President Donald Trump's plan to remove the de minimis exemption from goods made in China and Hong Kong may just be the start of a bigger push to remove that exemption from other countries, according to trade experts speaking during a Feb. 13 webinar sponsored by ShipHero, a warehouse management system provider for e-commerce and third-party logistics firms.
In a Feb. 14 email alert to members, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America warned that CBP has accepted some entries made by members even though those entries don't have proper duty calculations or new import duties on China that were mandated under President Donald Trump's executive order last week.
CBP's Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee will be holding its quarterly meeting on March 5 in Atlanta, according to a Federal Register notice.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
President Donald Trump's chief spokesman from his first term said that half-baked orders from the White House -- like an order to end de minimis for Chinese goods that CBP was not ready to implement -- is in part a result of Trump's memories of his staff trying to slow-walk and stop his tariff ideas.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A California customs broker pleaded guilty Feb. 7 to defrauding importers out of more than $5 million and committing over $1 million in tax evasion, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced. The broker, Frank Seung Noah, copped to two counts of wire fraud, for which he faces up to 20 years in prison each, and one count of tax evasion, for which he faces five years in prison.
CBP has created Harmonized Systems Updates 2505 and 2506. HSU 2505, created on Feb. 3, contains 84 Automated Broker Interface (ABI) records and 32 Harmonized Tariff Schedule records. It also includes the China/Hong Kong HTS updates.
The reversal of an order banning Chinese products from de minimis startled importers and members of the Senate Finance Committee, who were puzzling about how long it would be until the policy flipped again, and why the Commerce Department, which has never had involvement in de minimis before, has been put in charge of deciding when to implement the order.
The abrupt change in how CBP will process low-value goods made in China because of President Donald Trump's executive order banning the de minimis exemption for these goods (see 2502030034) is causing some upheaval among shippers unfamiliar with the other types of customs processing, importers, brokers and logistics providers told International Trade Today.