CBP Processing of Section 232 Exclusion PSCs Being Slowed by Large Volume of Requests

The CBP Base Metals Center of Excellence and Expertise is overseeing a huge increase in the number of Post Summary Correction requests for retroactive application of Section 232 exclusions, agency officials recently told the American Institute for International Steel. "The Base Metals Center PSC workload has increased approximately 1500% from pre Section 232," AIIS said. As a result of that volume, "[w]hen exclusions are claimed retroactively by PSC, some time may be required to process," the trade group said.

AIIS said in its newsletter that the group discussed a number of issues with the Center's Acting Director Diann Rodriguez, who took over for Center Director Africa Bell while on temporary assignment at CBP in Washington, and other officials. There seems to be an issue "when a second exclusion claim is made retroactively via PSC on an entry for which a previous claim was allowed if that previously claimed exclusion is exhausted and deactivated," AIIS said. Due to ACE programming, "ACE will reject a PSC if there is a line on the entry with a deactivated exclusion, even though that line has nothing to do with the new exclusion claim," it said.

The Section 232 tariffs continue to be a major issue for the Centers (see 1901160057), because "[o]ver 75% of all line items subject to Section 232 for steel, and almost 50% of those for aluminum, are handled by the Base Metals Center," AIIS said. "By contrast, only 3-4% of the line items subject to the China Section 301 duties are handled by the Base Metals Center." The agency continues to monitor value issues "looking in part to see if they are improperly offset in some other manner (such as out of scope product prices) or otherwise indicate some type of evasion," AIIS said.

CBP expects companies that were granted exclusions to self-monitor and make certain "that any claims fall within the coverage and approved quantity of the exclusion, and not rely on Customs to inform them of issues," the officials told AIIS. "The parameters of an exclusion are based on actual, not nominal, criteria. It was also noted that many exclusions are very specific, and goods, even if commercially interchangeable and covered by the same tariff item, that do not strictly conform to the exclusion will not receive the benefit."

The "Section 232 issues and the growing expertise of the Base Metals Center do not change the compliance responsibilities of importers," AIIS said. "They do, however, increase the level of scrutiny that Customs applies to those compliance responsibilities and the likelihood that errors and mistakes by importers may lead to enforcement actions. Importers and brokers should be particularly careful in this changing environment."