‘Hard to Make Sense’ of Tariff Exclusions From ‘Overwhelmed’ USTR Staff, Says Expert

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has granted about 35 percent of the roughly 15,000 requests it received to have products excluded from Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, customs expert John Brew with Crowell & Moring told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar Thursday. “Frankly, there’s a bit of subjectivity in the requests that we’ve seen granted so far,” said Brew. “Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of what’s happening. Part of that is because I think the USTR is overwhelmed. They have tens of thousands of requests and only a few people working on them.” Brew recalled a client who got USTR notification that its exclusion requests had been denied, only to find out later in a Federal Register notice that all had been granted. “Things like that happen, and you just never know how USTR is going to decide, unfortunately,” he said. There’s no exclusion process “yet set” for the List 4 tariffs, said Brew. “That should be coming at some point in the near future. We just don’t know when that’s going to happen.” USTR didn’t comment.