The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of March 5 (some may also be given separate headlines):
Customs Duty
A Customs Duty is a tariff or tax which a country imposes on goods when they are transported across international borders. Customs Duties are used to protect countries' economies, residents, jobs, and environments, by limiting the flow of imported merchandise, especially restricted and prohibited goods, into the country. The Customs Duty Rate is a percentage determined by the value of the article purchased in the foreign country and not based on quality, size, or weight.
An importer facing stiff penalties for an alleged antidumping duty evasion scheme can’t bring in a customs lawyer as an expert witness to testify that it exercised “reasonable care,” the Court of International Trade said in a March 2 decision. Whether Univar’s conduct met the “reasonable care” standard is a legal question, and inviting the customs lawyer to testify on that issue would be improperly taking that decision away from the judge and jury, CIT said.
Following President Trump's signaling of across the board tariffs on imported steel and aluminum (see 1803010029), exactly how Canadian steel fits in is among the major unanswered questions. Canada said in a March 1 statement that "as the number one customer of American steel, Canada would view any trade restrictions on Canadian steel and aluminum as absolutely unacceptable." The Defense Department has also said Canadian steel should not face Section 232 tariffs (see 1802230018).
The Commerce Department issued Federal Register notices on its recently initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on rubber bands from China (A-570-069/C-570-070), Sri Lanka (A-542-802/C-542-803) and Thailand (A-549-835/C-549-836).
In recent editions of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
An apparel importer that uses a Canadian company to warehouse goods until a U.S. customer is found was unable to show sufficient proof of the two companies being separate entities, CBP said in a Dec. 12 ruling. The agency said in HQ H276403 that the goods are "not exported pursuant to a lease or similar use agreement." As a result, the merchandise isn't eligible for duty-free treatment when re-entering the U.S., CBP said.
The Commerce Department issued notices in the Federal Register on its recently initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on cast iron soil pipe from China (A-570-079/C-570-080). The CV duty investigation covers entries Jan. 1, 2017, through Dec. 31, 2017. The AD duty investigation covers entries July 1, 2017, through Dec. 31, 2017.
CBP plans to issue procedures for ACE outages before the end of the month, the agency said in an Outages Working Group report released ahead of the Feb. 28 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting in Miami. CBP will "publish the public downtime procedures document by the end of February," it said. Following some COAC recommendations in November, "CBP’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has assigned a development team to begin working on the recommended enhancements," it said. "Enhancements to the Dashboard will be implemented throughout calendar year 2018."
Steel industry interests testified Feb. 16 that duty evasion is pervasive, and that customs enforcement cannot keep up. "Customs and duty evasion and circumvention occurs because there's opportunity and because there's lack of enforcement," said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. "Our border protections with regards to fairly traded goods are underfunded."
CBP and ICE will accept and consider private sector requests to conduct trade-related training, the agencies said in a notice. "Topics upon which training may be conducted include tariff classification, customs valuation, country of origin (including procedures for identifying merchandise bearing mislabeled country of origin markings), proper assessment of AD/CVD, evasion of duties on imports of textiles, border enforcement of [intellectual property rights], enforcement of child labor laws, and other topics as appropriate and useful as concerns the trade-related duties and missions of CBP and ICE."