Census Researching Value-Added for Re-Exports, Official Says

The Census Bureau is reaching out to companies that conduct value-added for re-exports in an effort to learn more about the process, Kiesha Downs, chief of the Census Bureau Foreign Trade Division’s regulations branch, said during a March 10 Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee meeting. Census has reached out to two companies so far, Downs said, but encourages other re-exporters to contact the agency.

Downs did not provide much detail about the effort during the meeting but said the agency is “looking at the shipments ... seeing how you’re actually coding them in the system” and how those goods are being classified. “So companies that do re-export, we’re trying to look into the data to see, OK, what value is being added into those goods that came in from foreign [countries].” Census did not comment.

The Trump administration was said to be considering changing the way it calculates trade deficits by excluding value-added re-exports from that calculation, according to a 2017 report in The Wall Street Journal. That approach would make the U.S.’s trade gap appear larger than in previous years, the report said. It would also inflate trade deficit numbers because it would count imports entering the country but not count those same goods when they are re-exported, the report said.