Manufacturers and trade associations called for more detailed petitions and comments, but the elimination of some "burdensome" requirements for supporting documentation, in comments on the International Trade Commission’s proposed new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) procedures. In response to the agency’s request for comments on new information collected for petitions under a reformed MTB process recently adopted into law (see 1606130009), commenters (here) took issue with a requirement to submit an entry summary, and called for the ITC to create an easily searchable list of products nominated for MTB tariff cuts. MTB reform legislation enacted in May requires the ITC to initially vet MTB requests before recommending specific tariff cuts to Congress (see 1606130009). Under the new law, the ITC is required to begin the first round of the MTB process in October.
Brian Feito
Brian Feito is Managing Editor of International Trade Today, Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. A licensed customs broker who spent time at the Department of Commerce calculating antidumping and countervailing duties, Brian covers a wide range of subjects including customs and trade-facing product regulation, the courts, antidumping and countervailing duties and Mexico and the European Union. Brian is a graduate of the University of Florida and George Mason University. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2012.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 8-14:
CBP’s Oct. 1 deadline for drawback in ACE will bring changes not only for electronic claims currently filed in the Automated Commercial System, but also for claims submitted manually, agency officials said during an Aug. 11 webinar. Electronic claims in ACE will be subject to a limit of 5,000 records, and supporting documentation will have to be uploaded in the document imaging system (DIS) within 24 hours for a claim to be considered complete, said Lena Torrence of CBP’s Commercial Operations, Revenue and Entry division. As CBP has previously announced (see 1606070040), current entry types 41 through 46 will be replaced with the single entry type 47, with the relevant provision of drawback laws cited on the claim, and all communication for electronic claims, including CBP Form 28s, through the ACE portal, she said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Aug. 1-7:
Protests may be filed to claim Generalized System of Preferences benefits, the Court of International Trade said in an Aug. 4 decision (here) that appears to contradict current CBP policy. Though it dismissed an importer’s challenge on a technicality, the court found flaws with the basis of CBP’s 2014 directive that ports no longer accept protests used to claim GSP duty-free treatment post-liquidation (see 14081320). CIT “essentially ruled that the government was wrong in taking the position that GSP claims cannot be raised in a protest,” said John Peterson of Neville Peterson, who represented the importer, Zojirushi America.
ACE filers continue to face downtime and slowdown issues worse than those encountered in the legacy Automated Commercial System, and several functionalities essential to the trade community are still unavailable, including some that were available in the legacy system before it was mostly shut down July 23, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America said in a position paper (here). “Much remains to be done” before the implementation of ACE can be declared a success, with performance of some aspects of the new electronic filing regime still lagging behind that of the ACS, it said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 25-31:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 18-24:
CBP’s July 23 deadline for most remaining entry types in ACE passed without any major problems, although the agency continues to monitor a handful of issues causing rejects for some quota transactions, CBP officials said on the agency’s July 25 daily technical call. Despite concerns over deployment of unproven quota systems in ACE with the legacy Automated Commercial System no longer available as a backup (see 1607220064), the agency had a “relatively quiet” weekend, and continues “to work through some of the issues we have encountered,” said Seven Zaccaro, client representative branch chief in the ACE business office
Concerns over potential technical and procedural issues related to the deployment of as-yet-unproven quota systems in ACE are leaving customs brokers uncertain on the eve of the July 23 ACE deadline for most remaining entry types, said brokers in interviews. A lack of real world testing and changes to quota business practices means some brokers aren’t entirely sure what’s going to happen after the deadline. The uncertainty is compounded by the simultaneous decommissioning of legacy Automated Commercial System, which leaves filers without a fallback that has been particularly valuable in the truck environment.