Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, CBP said in a March 10 ruling. The ruling, which was requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global, examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site for its customs records storage.
Tim Warren
Timothy Warren is Executive Managing Editor of Communications Daily. He previously led the International Trade Today editorial team from the time it was purchased by Warren Communications News in 2012 through the launch of Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. Tim is a 2005 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids.
The Office of the U.S Trade Representative plans to issue some new product exclusions from Section 301 tariffs on the third list of products from China (see 2004230003), it said in a notice. The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the tariffs on the third list took effect, and will remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020. New subheading 9903.88.45 will be used for these excluded products.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued a new group of product exclusions from the third group of Section 301 tariffs on goods from China. The new exclusions from the tariffs include "one 10-digit HTSUS subheading, which covers 20 separate exclusion requests, and 107 specially prepared product descriptions, which cover 157 separate exclusion requests," according to the notice. The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the third set of tariffs took effect. The exclusions will remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is seeing “an unprecedented connectivity with CBP” so far through the COVID-19 pandemic, said Alan Klestadt, customs counsel to the NCBFAA, during an April 21 webinar with lawyers for the association. “We're speaking with senior headquarters officials on a daily basis, multiple times a day, talking with them about developing policy, whether it is statement processing, duty deferral,” said Klestadt, a lawyer at Grunfeld Desiderio. That's particularly important when others in government “don't appreciate the granularity” of detail that customs brokers need to “effectively implement the policy decisions and the policy goals that the administration is pursuing.”
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for April 13-17 in case they were missed.
CBP found seven xanthan gum importers to have used evasion to escape antidumping duties, the agency said in a newly released final determination. The finding, dated March 9, followed allegations filed by CP Kelco that claimed that the imports were transshipped through Malaysia or India to evade antidumping order A-570-985 on xanthan gum from China (see 1910040037). The agency will continue to suspend liquidation and require AD duty cash deposits on the companies' entries due to the final determination, CBP said.
President Donald Trump authorized the temporary extension of “deadlines, for importers suffering significant financial hardship because of COVID-19,” in an April 19 Executive Order. “To qualify for this temporary postponement, an importer must demonstrate a significant financial hardship,” CBP said in a prepublication version of a temporary final rule. While the CBP notice limits the deferrals to March and April payments, the EO gives the Treasury secretary broad authority to postpone duty collections during the COVID-19 national emergency.
There could be a dramatic increase on the number of Importer insolvencies in the near future unless something major changes, said Lisa Gelsomino, a co-chair of the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) and CEO of Avalon Risk Management. “We're expecting that if things don't change soon there's going to be at least a 25 percent increase of importer insolvencies from last year,” she said during the April 15 COAC meeting. With many small businesses now shut down for about 30 days, a lot “really are not going to have the ability to pay, come soon,” she said.
CBP won't be delaying dates around implementation of the updated Minimum Security Criteria for the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, but it will allow for more discretion in the validations, said Thomas Overacker, CBP executive director, Cargo and Conveyance Security. Overacker addressed concerns about the requirements during the April 15 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting.
CBP has drafted some interim implementing instructions for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that could be released as soon as April 17, a CBP official said during an April 16 conference call. The draft is being circulated within the government and is planned to eventually go up on CBP's website, she said. The instructions will detail how to file an entry, and the Special Program Indicator code will be S, she said. There's also some discussion about an S+ code for agricultural goods with special requirements, similar to the CAFTA-DR codes, she said. A CSMS message would announce the release of the instructions, she said.