Tim Warren

The Commerce Department is still considering the use of import licensing requirements as part of coming regulations to be issued as a result of a May 15 executive order on supply chain security (see 1905160019), said Jennifer Lane, senior counsel in the general counsel's office at Commerce. Lane discussed the EO as part of a July 10 panel on 5G and supply chains at the Bureau of Industry and Security export controls conference. Most decisions for the regulations remain under discussion and may change before the rules are released by the Oct. 12 deadline.

The rapid changes in trade policy have elevated the need for adroit trade compliance management at international companies that hadn't previously been so concerned with customs duties, said two compliance professionals who spoke at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington on June 28. "It's been an overall breaking down walls of communication" among the various groups at the company who "historically" didn't interact very often, said Antoinette Montoya, corporate export-import compliance manager at Bechtel Corporation. Now, though, "we've had a lot of really good strategic relationships built out of this," she said. Whatever happens with subsequent administrations, those relationships will "really help us in the long run," Montoya said.

CBP would like to use the ongoing discussion around the 21st century customs framework (see 1903040023) as a way to review some of the most basic ways the agency looks at trade, said Thomas Overacker, CBP executive director, Cargo and Conveyance Security on June 28 while at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington. Hypotheticals mentioned by CBP officials as discussion starters included a rewrite of the entry language in 19 CFR 141 and whether drawback remains a necessary program.

CBP's Office of Regulations and Rulings is facing a massive increase in ruling requests involving products from China, in addition to its need to weigh in on exclusion requests, CBP Assistant Commissioner Brenda Smith said June 28 at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington. The trade remedy exclusion requests are reviewed by OR&R "because of the tariff classification inherent in the application and then in the final determination," she said. Exclusion requests for the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum are now at about 80,000, well above the 10,000 that were expected when first announced, she said. That's not counting the exclusion request processes now available for the first three tranches of Section 301 tariffs on goods from China, she said.

The World Customs Organization will be reconsidering some classification decisions at the next Harmonized System Committee meeting in September, according to law firm Sandler Travis. The reconsideration involves classification decisions of "at least two products -- certain vitamins and certain RF generators and RE matching networks -- after reservations were filed by the U.S. and others against the classification decisions," Sandler Travis said in a June 20 email.

Even on the U.S.-Mexico border, Congress members were not hearing much alarm from constituents when President Donald Trump was threatening to levy tariffs on all Mexican imports because he was unhappy with the volume of Central American migration. "They don't necessarily understand how that was going to impact them," said Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas. He'd tell them: "This is going to impact jobs, like Toyota in San Antonio."

Quartz countertops imported from China and cut from quartz slabs from the U.S. are considered to be of U.S. origin, CBP said in a April 25 ruling. The ruling comes at the request of idX Corporation, which imports the cut and polished countertops into the U.S. Both the unfinished slabs and the finished countertops are classified under subheading 6810.99.00, as “Articles of … artificial stone, whether or not reinforced: Other: Other.” That subheading is included in the third tranche of Section 301 tariffs on goods from China.

President Donald Trump may institute tariffs on goods from Mexico after withdrawing them if the Mexican legislature doesn't approve a part of the deal between the two countries, he said in June 10 tweets. "We have fully signed and documented another very important part of the Immigration and Security deal with Mexico, one that the U.S. has been asking about getting for many years. It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body!" he said. "We do not anticipate a problem with the vote but, if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, Tariffs will be reinstated!" The two sides reached a deal on June 7 to avoid the tariffs (see 1906070081) with Mexico agreeing to play a bigger role in handling of migrants from Central America who seek asylum in the U.S., the two countries said in a June 7 joint statement.

Joseph Bailey, CEO of children's clothing companies Stargate Apparel and Rivstar Apparel, is facing criminal charges over allegedly falsifying documents that were given to CBP upon import, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York said in a June 6 news release. Bailey is said to have submitted "invoices to CBP that falsely understated the true value of the goods his company imported," the Justice Department said. In addition to the criminal charges, Bailey and the companies face a civil lawsuit, DOJ said.

The International Trade Commission's past finding against domestic industry harm due to titanium sponge imports is immaterial to the question of the possible national security issues under a Section 232 investigation, Timet said in rebuttal comments related to its petition to impose Section 232 import restrictions. Timet said that within the ITC investigation, the commission specifically didn't consider the company's "make or buy" argument that weighs the factors for how a company decides to produce or import downstream titanium mill products. Within the Section 232 analysis, Commerce "is not statutorily barred" from considering Timet's "make or buy" argument, Timet said. The governments of Japan and Kazakhstan were among the previous commenters that objected to Timet's petition (see 1904230050).