The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative opened a portal to be used for submitting exclusion requests for industrial machinery outside the solar sector.
Less than a month from the election, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves invited U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to speak at his company's Coatesville, Pennsylvania, mill about how recent policy has supported steelworkers.
Bangladesh is the country of origin for blue surgical towels imported by Global Resources International (GRI), CBP said in a notice. GRI had asked CBP to make a final determination on the surgical towels' country of origin on April 12 for the purposes of U.S. government procurement. The towels are made from 100% cotton huckaback weave fabric from Bangladesh, where the fabric is also woven and dyed blue. It's then shipped to Vietnam in rolls, where it's cut to size, sewn, autoclaved, packaged and shipped to the U.S. Because of these factors, the country of origin is Bangladesh, CBP said, outlining its reasoning in the attached ruling HQ H339826). The surgical towels are classified under subheading 6307.90.89 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S.
CBP has released its Oct. 9 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 58, No. 40), which includes the following ruling actions:
CBP's new Forced Labor Allegation Portal and Forced Labor Portal will consolidate the information collection of potential forced labor violations into one centralized location, "increasing efficiency and reducing the burden of collection to both CBP and the public," the agency said in a notice seeking comments as it prepares to submit the information collection to the Office of Management and Budget.
Think tank scholars from Cato Institute, a libertarian organization, say the best chance for preventing a 20% tariff on all non-Chinese imports and a 60% tariff on Chinese imports is for Congress to curtail the executive's power to impose tariffs during the upcoming lame-duck session.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
Former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Bárcena said that she has been told that the U.S. will not comply with the panel ruling that said that rollup was understood to be part of the automotive rule of origin (see 2403070067), and she said that is undermining USMCA. She said that's because both the Republicans and the Democrats are fighting for the political support of the United Autoworkers and Teamsters. (The autoworkers' union characterizes rollup as watering down the requirement for North American content in vehicles).
Felicia Pullam, executive director of trade relations at CBP, defended the administration's proposal to end de minimis eligibility for goods subject to Section 301 tariffs as workable, arguing that charging a $2 fee per de minimis package will allow the agency to hire more staff to screen for contraband, and pushing back on industry arguments that collecting tariffs on low-value packages costs the agency more than that revenue.
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