The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has issued a notice on certain changes which take effect on May 15, 2004 regarding the import and export of seahorses and other tropical fish.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Commerce Department have both issued notices announcing the results of the April 21, 2004 meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) meeting. Highlights of these results include (partial list):

Washington Trade Daily reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recently decided to cancel the next round of technical level talks on steel subsidies and to delay a meeting of senior officials that had been scheduled for early May 2004. According to the article, a U.S. trade official stated that the multilateral talks on curbing government subsidies to the steel sectors and global overcapacity have hit a stalemate, and may need to be moved to another forum to find an agreement. (WTD dated 04/21/04, www.washingtontradedaily.com)

According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) notice and CBP sources, beginning later in 2004, continuous bond numbers issued under CBP's Pilot Bond Centralization Program are expected to include alpha character(s) (rather than "all numeric" characters as they do now).

U.S. government sources state that the International Trade Commission (ITC) has decided to delay the posting of a revised 2004 electronic Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. (HTS Revision 1).

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has issued a final rule stating that Beluga Sturgeon (Huso huso) will have a "threatened" status under the authority of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), effective October 21, 2004.

Washington Trade Daily reports that Senate leaders have admitted that they had not made much progress over the Easter break to reduce the list of 80 amendments to the Extraterritorial Income Tax (ETI) repeal bill, which is needed in order to end escalating trade sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) in March 2004 after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the tax break amounts to a prohibited export subsidy. (WTD dated 04/21/04, www.washingtontradedaily.com)

(BP has issued a new version of this ITT summary in order to correct the summary's BP Note listing the case numbers used for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purposes. This new version, with corrected text between the double asterisks (**), supercedes the original version issued in ITT's 04/02/04 news as 04040225.)

The House Ways and Means Committee has issued an advisory stating that its Subcommittee on Trade will hold a hearing on April 29, 2004 on trade with sub-Saharan Africa and H.R. 4103, the "African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Acceleration Act of 2004" (also known as AGOA III).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a press release with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) announcing that on April 18, 2004 a Free and Secure Trade (FAST) dedicated lane was opened southbound at the Champlain, NY/Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec border crossing. (CBP Press Release, dated 04/19/04, available at http://www.cbsa.gc.ca/newsroom/releases/2004/0419fast-e.html)