The Internal Revenue Service said it is considering the addition of five chemicals to its list of taxable substances subject to the Superfund tax on imports. The agency seeks comments by March 16 on petitions to add acrylate monomer synthetic rubber in a water emulsion imported under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4002.91.0000 at a tax rate of $5.73/ton; methyl methacrylate-ethyl methacrylate-methacrylic acid copolymer in a styrene solution under HTS subheading 3906.90.5000 at a tax rate of $11.55/ton; styrene-DVB-EVB with styrene content of greater than 50% under HTS subheading 3903.90.5000 at a tax rate of $9.93/ton; styrene-DVB-EVB with styrene content of less than 50% under HTS subheading 3903.90.5000 at a tax rate of $10.03/ton; and vinyl acetate-crotonic acid copolymer in a styrene solution under HTS subheading 3905.29.0000 at tax rate of $7.48/ton.
Witnesses at a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing about digital trade and international protections of intellectual property rights praised the Trump administration's work on maintaining a moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions, such as music downloads, streaming films and software.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 14 confirmed that the government's stipulation regarding the availability of refunds from tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act "applies to all current and future similarly situated plaintiffs."
CBP has added more parties to the list of those qualified to pay duties on international mail shipments (see 2509150015), according to a Jan. 14 cargo systems message. The list is available here.
Public comments submitted to the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee's Jan. 14 meeting were supportive of the committee's recommendations calling for CBP to release clearer and additional guidance on how importers can comply with Section 232 tariffs (see 2601120017), particularly when it comes to the valuation of steel and aluminum content.
Certain advanced chips -- including the NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X, a White House fact sheet said -- will be subject to 25% Section 232 tariffs starting Jan. 15, but a broad array of domestic uses of those chips are carved out from the action.
Certain advanced chips, whose parameters are described in the annex to a presidential proclamation, will be subject to 25% tariffs starting Jan. 15, but a broad array of domestic uses are carved out of the Section 232 action.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 5-11:
The U.S. argued on Jan. 12 that the "undisputed facts" show that importer Lanxess' polymerization accelerator -- a substance used to speed up the chemical process of plastic manufacturing -- can't accelerate a chemical reaction "in its condition as imported," thus removing it from Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 3915 as a "reaction accelerator" (Lanxess Corporation v. United States, CIT # 23-00073).
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