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.
The Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 11 that imported industrial shredders that use blades to break up material carry no duties because they are classifiable as crushing and grinding machines.
Congress should remove permanent normal trade relations status for China, but rather than move Chinese imports into Column 2, it should create a China-specific tariff schedule "that restores U.S. economic leverage to ensure that the [Chinese government] abides by its trade commitments and does not engage in coercive or other unfair trade practices and decreases U.S. reliance on [Chinese] imports in sectors important for national and economic security," the House Select Committee on China wrote as one of its dozens of legislative recommendations in its "Strategy to Win America's Economic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party." The report, released Dec. 12, also recommended:
The Customs Modernization bill introduced in the Senate allows CBP to access data from parties in the supply chain other than importers, allows those parties to update and amend their advance data, and authorizes a customs broker or importer of record to convert the pre-entry information into a certified entry filing.
Large steel and aluminum corporations and associations representing small and medium-sized metal processors, recyclers and environmental advocates told the International Trade Commission that it's on the right track in the questions it's asking about embedded carbon in steelmaking and aluminum smelting, but that choosing detailed data is tricky, and, in some cases, not possible for smaller companies to produce. Broadly, there are scope 1 emissions, which are the greenhouse gases produced through onsite processes; scope 2, which cover the purchased electricity needed for manufacturing and scope 3, which cover the embedded carbon of inputs, whether raw materials or semifinished goods.
DHS is adding three more Chinese companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list for their participation in forced labor transfer programs, including two based outside the Xinjiang province of China.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said there is no interest in offering Taiwan "a very, very comprehensive, maximally liberalizing, aggressively liberalizing agreement." Tai, who was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum Dec. 7, was asked if the administration would pursue a free trade agreement with Taiwan, since Congress passed a bill welcoming such a negotiation. "We're not doing that with anybody right now," she added.
The Court of International Trade doesn't have jurisdiction to hear importer Southern Cross Seafoods' challenge to the National Marine Fisheries Service's rejection of its application for preapproval to import Chilean sea bass, the court ruled Dec. 7. Judge Timothy Reif said that the agency's decision, issued under the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Convention Act of 1984 (AMLRCA), doesn't constitute an "embargo or other quantitative restriction," barring jurisdiction under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction.
If a bill just introduced becomes law, importers of fossil fuels, refined petroleum products, petrochemicals, fertilizer, hydrogen, adipic acid, cement, iron and steel, aluminum, glass, pulp, paper, lime and gypsum products and ethanol would have to pay a duty at the border based on the carbon intensity of either the industry in the home country, the product, if a specific petition was made, or an economywide carbon intensity measure, if no reliable data is available by industry.
Textile gloves with a plastic coating on the palm and fingers are classifiable in the tariff schedule as gloves, not as articles of plastics, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Dec. 6 opinion.