USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service is seeking comments on whether it's necessary and appropriate to establish additional terms and conditions for sugar imports, including the potential impact that changes to those terms and conditions might have on the domestic sugar industry, according to a Federal Register notice. Comments are due by Jan. 14.
The Court of International Trade erred in ruling that importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination's planning calendars are diaries under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4820.10.2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Dec. 4. Judges Alan Lourie, William Bryson and Raymond Chen said the trade court violated the principle of stare decisis by skirting the CAFC's prior interpretation of the term "diary."
Specialty crop interests testifying at the first of three days of hearings on UMSCA Dec. 3 disagreed on whether duty-free access for Mexican imports should continue, and protectionists' arguments were echoed by Global Trade Watch.
A Wisconsin federal court on Dec. 1 dismissed a case from a former prisoner at the Nunan Chishan Prison in China against Milwaukee Electric Tool and its parent company, Techtronic Industries, for allegedly importing goods made with forced labor. Judge Brett Ludwig of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin held that the civil remedy of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which is the statute the prisoner sued under, doesn't apply to conduct occurring outside the U.S. (Xu Lun v. Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., E.D. Wis. # 24-803).
Since the United Kingdom's National Health Service has agreed to pay more for new medicines, the Trump administration is pledging "to exempt U.K.-origin pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical ingredients, and medical technology from Section 232 tariffs and will refrain from targeting U.K. pharmaceutical pricing practices in any future Section 301 investigation for the duration of President [Donald] Trump’s term."
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 26 granted the government's motion for rehearing in a customs dispute on the classification of certain radial, web and chordal segments imported by Honeywell and used in airplane brakes, changing the classification of the parts to "fabrics" under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 6307. Judge Mark Barnett reversed his previous holding that the goods are "parts of an aircraft" under heading 8803, subjecting the items at issue to a 7% duty under subheading 6307.90.98.
The Congressional Budget Office updated its estimate of how much tariffs would reduce the federal deficit, if they stayed in place for 10 years, now saying they would reduce it by $2.5 trillion rather than $3.3 trillion (not counting saved interest costs).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Nov. 17 held that five types of medical foods imported by Nutricia North America are properly classified as "medicaments" and not as "food preparations." Judges Sharon Prost, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark overruled the Court of International Trade's decision, which came to the opposite conclusion, finding that Nutricia's products are properly found to be medicaments under duty-free Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 3004.50.5040.
As customs brokers and importers respond to sudden changes in U.S. trade compliance regulations, the trade will need to come up with new models that can allow companies to be nimble when those changes trickle down to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, trade expert Cindy Allen said recently at the Automotive Industry Action Group's North American Customs and Trade Town Hall on Nov. 6 in Detroit.
The U.S. is likely to commit to a full renegotiation of USMCA during the trade pact's upcoming sunset review and could even abandon the trilateral agreement in favor of individual ones, according to Miguel Messmacher, former chief economist at the Ministry of Finance of Mexico.