U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a press release stating that Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 was a record-breaking year for the volume of trade entering through U.S. seaports and borders. According to CBP, it collected nearly $1 billion more in revenue for the federal government in FY 2003 than in FY 2002.
Customs Duty
A Customs Duty is a tariff or tax which a country imposes on goods when they are transported across international borders. Customs Duties are used to protect countries' economies, residents, jobs, and environments, by limiting the flow of imported merchandise, especially restricted and prohibited goods, into the country. The Customs Duty Rate is a percentage determined by the value of the article purchased in the foreign country and not based on quality, size, or weight.
The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued a notice of inquiry announcing that it is considering proposing regulations that would establish procedures that the agency would follow when it has reason to believe that a person has certified and submitted false statements, or engaged in a scheme to certify and submit false statements, in the course of an antidumping (AD) or countervailing (CV) duty proceeding.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a notice stating that, effective January 23, 2004, the U.S. is rescinding the visa and ELVIS requirement for Chinese origin products in Categories 222, 349/649 and 350/650 which remain subject to safeguard quotas. (See ITT's Online Archives or 01/22/04 news, 04012210, for BP summary of the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements' (CITA's) announcement of this rescission.) (QBT-04-001, dated 01/23/04, available at http://www.cbp.gov/ImageCache/cgov/content/import/textiles/qbt/qbt2004/2004_5f001_2edoc/v1/2004_5f001.doc)
The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued the final results of its changed circumstances review of the countervailing (CV) duty order on carbon and certain alloy steel wire rod from Canada. As a result, the ITA is revoking this CV duty order for entries of subject merchandise with a time of entry on or after February 8, 2002.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a notice which invites the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on an information collection requirement concerning the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Textile Certificate of Origin.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site its weekly quota commodity report as of January 20, 2004. This report includes tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on various products such as beef, tuna, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cocoa, tobacco, certain Jordan Free Trade Agreement (JFTA), Chile Free Trade Agreement (UCFTA), and Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SFTA) TRQs, etc. This report also includes TRQs on certain HTS Chapter 52 cotton, upland cotton under HTS Chapter 99, the UCFTA, SFTA, CBTPA, AGOA, ATPDEA, and NAFTA tariff preference levels (TPLs) for qualifying apparel and/or other textile articles, the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics under HTS 9902.51.11 & 9902.51.12, etc. (CBP's weekly quota commodity report, dated 01/20/04, available at http://www.customs.ustreas.gov/xp/cgov/import/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted a list of the most common errors that cause the rejection of continuous transaction bond (continuous bond) applications and CBP's desired solutions for these errors.
The Winter 2003 issue of the NCBFAA Quarterly Bulletin contains an article that states that miscellaneous tariff and trade bills are no longer routine, are not predictable, and may not even be possible. The article notes that such bills have increasingly become the vehicle for solving larger, tougher trade and economic issues that have nothing to do with the tedious technical language of miscellaneous tariff and trade bills. (NBFAA Quarterly Bulletin, No. 103-4, Winter 2003, www.ncbfaa.org.)
The European Union (EU) is requesting World Trade Organization (WTO) authorization to apply retaliatory sanctions against the U.S. for its failure to bring the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (Byrd Amendment) into conformity with WTO rules by December 27, 2003. The EU states that this deadline for compliance with the WTO Appellate Body's ruling passed without action from U.S. Congress to repeal the measure.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued 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.