The Commerce Department made preliminary affirmative antidumping duty determinations that imports of mattresses from Bosnia and Herzegovina (A-893-002), Bulgaria (A-487-001), Myanmar (formerly Burma) (A-546-001), India (A-533-919), Italy (A-475-845), Kosovo (A-803-001), Mexico (A-201-859), the Philippines (A-565-804), Poland (A-455-807), Slovenia (A-856-002), Spain (A-469-826), and Taiwan (A-583-873). The agency will suspend liquidation and impose AD duty cash requirements on entries of subject merchandise from Bulgaria, India, Kosovo, Mexico, Poland, Slovenia and Spain beginning March 1, when these preliminary determinations were published. Suspension of liquidation and AD duty cash deposit requirements take retroactive effect for Bosnia, Myanmar, Italy, Taiwan and the Philippines beginning Dec. 2, 2023.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the following voluntary recalls Feb. 29:
On Feb. 29, the FDA posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:
USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation announced Feb. 29 that Special Import Quota #20 for upland cotton will be established March 7, allowing importation of 6,540,756 kilograms (30,041 bales) of upland cotton, the same as the previous quota period. The quota will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than June 4, 2024, and entered into the U.S. by Sept. 2, 2024. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally adjusted average rate for the October through December 2023 period, the most recent three months for which data is available.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
A listing of recent Commerce Department antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted on CBP's website Feb. 29, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at CBP's ADCVD Search page.
In FY 2024 so far, more than 485 million packages have entered the U.S. under de minimis, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a March 1 statement. That continues an upward trend from 1.05 billion de minimis shipments in all of FY 2023, which was an increase of 53% from the 685 million de minimis shipments in FY 2022, he said.
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said that he thinks a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program can get through Congress in the next three months.
The Court of International Trade in a decision made public Feb. 29 rejected Chinese printer cartridge exporter Ninestar Corp.'s motion for a preliminary injunction against its designation on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. Judge Gary Katzmann said the company was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims and failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction. He also said the balance of equities and public interest favored the government.
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commissioner Kimberly Glas, calling e-commerce "a superhighway of the Wild West," asked witnesses at a hearing on Chinese exports and product safety if de minimis is a major contributor to unsafe products.