Several agencies have said they are at least willing to consider accepting partner government agency (PGA) data at the time of admission of goods into a foreign-trade zone, said leadership from the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones at the NAFTZ Legislative Summit on Feb. 15 in Washington. Once CBP implements its Form 214 application for FTZ admission form in ACE, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could use the new capability to accept data before entry, they said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 30 - Feb. 5:
A recent executive order requiring the repeal of two regulations for every new one implemented applies only to regulations deemed “significant” by the Office of Management and Budget, according to “interim guidance” issued by OMB on Feb. 2 (here). The interim guidance also lists exemptions to the “two-for-one” and regulatory budgeting requirements set by the executive order, as well as what qualifies as a deregulatory action, including elimination of reporting and recordkeeping requirements. Despite the potential burden, the interim guidance said agencies must perform new cost analyses for the two deregulations, rather than relying on previous cost estimates.
The border adjustable “cash flow tax” proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives has many important differences from the value-added tax (VAT) imposed by many countries around the world, Caroline Freund said during a Feb. 1 Peterson Institute for International Economics conference on the proposal (here). Unlike the uniform VAT, the “cash flow tax” hits companies differently, depending on how much they import, said Freund, a senior fellow at Peterson. Though the bottom line effects of the tax may eventually even out between importers and domestic manufacturers, the adjustment could be messy, she said. And World Trade Organization cases to challenge the tax could result in unprecedented amounts of retaliation, said Chad Brown, another Peterson senior fellow, also speaking at the event.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 23-29:
Lawn tractor starter motors imported from Mexico with certain non-originating components are nonetheless eligible for NAFTA duty preferences because the non-originating components are incorporated into an originating “intermediate good,” CBP said in a recent ruling. The non-originating components undergo an allowed tariff shift before incorporation into the finished starter motor, so they don’t have to be taken into account when calculating the finished good’s regional value content, CBP said in ruling HQ H273100 (here), issued Jan. 6.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recently ended e-filing alpha pilot went relatively smoothly, but expansion of e-filing to more entries could drastically increase costs, pilot participants said during a meeting with Consumer Product Safety Commission officials on Jan. 26 (here). Required data was mostly easy to obtain, but the manual process most used during the ACE pilot for entering data in CPSC’s data registry and tying it to entries will become burdensome as filing expands. Customs brokers at the meeting said the pilot went well. However, the complex disclaimer process CPSC anticipates using means the commission will need to be careful about the scope of its PGA message set, participants said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 16-22:
The Food Safety and Inspection Service is proposing changes to nutrition labeling requirements for meat (including fish of the order Siluriformes, i.e., catfish) and poultry products (here). The proposed rule would align FSIS nutrition labels with the new labeling scheme adopted by the Food and Drug Administration in May (see 1605200021). FSIS would revise the information required on nutrition facts labels, adopt FDA's new format with larger type for calorie and serving information, and adopt new reference values for pregnant and lactating women and children under age 4. Single serving size and dual column labeling would be required for certain containers, and recordkeeping required for some nutrients. Comments are due March 20.
The Environmental Protection Agency is withdrawing significant new use rules (SNURs) it recently set for two chemical substances, it said (here). EPA said it received objections to two of the 57 SNURs the agency set in a November final rule (see 1611170029), so it will soon begin a formal rulemaking process for those two chemicals with a notice and comment period. The SNURs, which covered a bimodal mixture consisting of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and other classes of carbon nanotubes (generic) (PMN No. P-11- 482) and carbon nanotubes (generic) (PMN No. P-15-54), took effect Jan. 17.