Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine) are among lawmakers pushing the Obama administration to keep footwear tariffs, as negotiations continue on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they said in press releases. The Maine legislators joined employees of sneaker-maker New Balance July 18 to make their case in Washington, DC. Michaud said U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has accepted an invitation to visit a New Balance factory in Maine this fall.
The Senate Finance Committee approved legislation July 18 that would give permanent normal trade relations status to Russia and repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which has been in place since 1974 to restrict trade with communist countries. Text of the bill is (here). The committee considered several pieces of trade legislation during the July 18 markup.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related issues:
This summary report highlights the most active textile and apparel tariff preference levels from CBP’s July 16 “Quota Weekly Commodity Status Report.” It also lists the TRQ commodities on CBP’s weekly July 16, 2012 “TRQ/TPL Threshold to Fill List.”1
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Australian Minister for Home Affairs Jason Clare said July 17 an Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officer was seconded to the U.S. CBP. The Australian CBP officer will be seconded to the U.S. CBP Office of Intelligence and Investigations Liaison and the International Targeting Center. The officer’s role will focus on the joint targeting and analysis of criminal syndicates and the establishment of a Collaborative Targeting Framework between the U.S. and Australia. “The Australian and United States Customs and Border Protection agencies work very closely together," said Clare. "This is the next step. Embedding our experts inside United States Customs and Border Protection will improve our ability to target the activities of potential terrorists, drug smugglers and other organised criminals who try to target Australia." The countries previously outlined the plans for the U.S. and Australia to increase their capacity to identify high risk actors and activities at the earliest point possible.
CBP is requesting comments by Sept. 18 for an existing information collection concerning applications for CBP security IDs. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours or to the information collected. The notice ran in the Federal Register July 20.
CBP will host a trade forum on Fines, Penalties and Forfeitures (FP&F) at 10 a.m. PST July 26, CBP said in a public bulletin. The forum will be at 25 Harbor Plaza, Long Beach, Calif. 90802. The presentation will be conducted by Robert Thierry, director of FP&F and Jeff DeHaven, deputy director of FP&F.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is seeking volunteers to participate in the document imaging system trial, said CBP in a CSMS message. The pilot allows importers and brokers that use ACE to submit official CBP documents and specified Participating Government Agency (PGA) forms via the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
CBP released a draft of discussion items from the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) working group on residue. Several issues are discussed in the draft, including bonds and a carrier’s ability to determine quantity and value. These issues and others will be discussed at the Aug. 15 COAC meeting in Seattle. See future issues of ITT for further coverage of the the draft.
CBP will be deploying enhancements to the Electronic Invoice Program and Remote Location Filng programs in the fall, the agency said in a CSMS message July 19. The updates will allow Antidumping (AD)/Countervailing (CVD) consumption entry summaries (Entry Type 03) to be filed in ACE. Currently, RLF only includes filing for entry types 01 and 11.