TUCSON, Arizona -- The Consumer Product Safety Commission aims to begin a pilot program in 2023 with wide participation from importers to test “e-filing” of certificate of compliance data elements, with an eye toward making the PGA message set mandatory in 2025, said Sabrina Keller, deputy director of CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance, during a panel of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference May 2.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a notice May 3 that asks companies that benefit from the Section 301 tariffs on List 1 to tell USTR if they think the tariffs should continue. They can comment May 7 to July 5. Companies that benefit from the tariffs on List 2 can comment June 24 to Aug. 22.

Florida's two U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, introduced a bill that would require publicly traded companies to report any transactions with Chinese companies on the entity list or that are designated as military-industrial complex companies, and report their sourcing and due diligence activities for supply chains if their imported products have been "directly linked to products utilizing forced labor from Xinjiang, China." The senators, both Republican, announced the bill April 29, and said they have four other Republican co-sponsors.

House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., would also be open to lowering or lifting tariffs on at least some Ukrainian goods, he said during a hallway interview at the Capitol on April 28. Neal said he had just left a meeting with the president of Georgia, and she had told him the U.S. support for Ukraine needed to last. The U.K. has lifted tariffs on all Ukrainian imports, and the EU's parliament is considering doing the same.

FDA will require that food importers transmit their Data Universal Numbering System number for entries of food subject to the Foreign Supplier Verification Program regulations beginning July 24, it said in a guidance document released April 27. The agency will on that date end a grace period that has allowed importers to instead transmit “UNK” for unknown instead of a DUNS number since 2018 (see 1705100028).

Among the 28 motions to instruct for negotiations that will be considered next Tuesday and Wednesday in the Senate, five would affect trade, including one that supports the establishment of an inspector general for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The Senate Finance Committee is talking about liberalizing trade with Ukraine, according to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who represents many Ukrainian-Americans in his state. He told International Trade Today at the Capitol on April 27 that the proposals being discussed might be broader than just lifting Section 232 tariffs on Ukrainian steel. Lifting 25% tariffs on Ukrainian steel was argued for by Senate Finance Committee member Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

A contract clause between the middleman and the final customer is not proof of a bona fide sale for the purposes of determining whether a transaction is eligible for first sale treatment, CBP said in a recent ruling. Merely citing the clause within a contract does not provide actual proof of the facts of that sale or whether risk of loss and title actually transfer to the middleman before it entered into the transaction with the importer, CBP said in the Feb. 18 ruling, released by the agency April 26. The ruling was a response to an application for further review by Woodcraft Supply LLC, which contests CBP's denial of its first sale valuation of imported merchandise.

Hapag-Lloyd was ordered to pay $822,220 by a U.S. administrative law judge after a Federal Maritime Commission investigation determined the carrier imposed unfair detention fees, according to an April 22 decision. Hapag-Lloyd “acted unreasonably” by charging detention fees on a drayage provider that was unable to make appointments to return empty containers, the FMC’s Bureau of Enforcement said, and continued to impose the charges after they were disputed alongside “corroborating evidence.”

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