International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Importer Blue Sky The Color of Imagination's "weekly/monthly planners" are properly classified as "other" registers, account books, notebooks, diaries and the like under Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 4820.2010, and not calendars under heading 4910, the Court of International Trade ruled on April 21.
Trade groups representing a wide swath of businesses accused the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative of using Section 301 to reverse-engineer the global tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court.
A former Trump National Economic Council trade expert, Kate Kalutkiewicz, said the changes to the Section 232 derivatives methodology "does reflect an acknowledgment by the administration that there was a lot of confusion by importers around how they were supposed to calculate the value of steel, aluminum or copper in a good and apply a tariff. Customs, I think, was also struggling to come up with formulas that made sense here."
Over 55,000 members of the trade community have logged in to the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries tool to submit their refund claims for International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs paid on over 4 million imports, said Susan Thomas, executive assistant commissioner at CBP, in a video on CBP's LinkedIn account. She said there was a 98% successful log-in rate.
When a Republican House member asked U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer how he "is working to provide greater clarity around tariff and trade policy so small businesses have the confidence they need to plan, and invest and expand," he replied that avoiding imports guarantees avoiding tariffs.
Importers may face risks if they have multiple brokers file their requests for refunds of International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, specifically for tariffs being returned to non-resident importers, industry officials said at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference on April 15.
Trade groups representing the entire domestic auto industry said they don't want major changes to rules of origin in a USMCA rewrite, and said that imposing 25% tariffs on formerly duty-free Canadian and Mexican cars undermines the trade pact. The Commerce Department said more than a year ago that it would impose 25% tariffs on USMCA-compliant auto and truck parts, once it could identify how much of the value was not domestic, but has never implemented that part of the Section 232 action.
Customs brokers won't be able to use CBP's new CAPE system to request refunds for importers for which they did not file the underlying entries for which refunds are being requested, said a CBP official on an agency webinar held April 16.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said that while he is "not contemplating a hearing or a markup" on bills introduced to end the practice of first sale or to restrict who can be a non-resident importer, that doesn't mean he's ruling out action.