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.
China is the country of origin for Lexmark printers imported from Mexico for both Section 301 trade duties and country of origin marking, CBP said in a recently released ruling. CBP found that the printer transports incorporated into the printer, which were made in China, were critical for the printer to feed the paper and to print copies, and were the component that imparted essential character, rather than the printed circuit board assemblies, which were assembled in Mexico.
Medicinal products used in animal feeds are properly classified as "antibiotics" under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 2941 rather than as "animal feeds" under HTS heading 2309, CBP headquarters said in a recently released ruling.
The Commerce-led pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework -- tax and anti-corruption, climate and supply chain -- are all completed or all-but-completed, but the U.S. chose not to talk about which parts of the trade pillar have reached agreement during a round of IPEF negotiations in San Francisco. The administration also is making no projections about when the trade pillar, led by the U.S. trade representative, might be completed.
The White House said it will ask the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to "pursue effective and meaningful remediation of labor rights violations or to address gaps in labor rights protections," and asked USTR and the Department of Labor to develop new tools and strategies to address these gaps.
The Senate Finance Committee chairman, joined by four Republicans and three other Democrats, asked the head of CBP to prioritize Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement and USMCA textile enforcement in the coming year, saying that American textile mills that are closing have said a key factor in weak demand for their yarns or fabric is "lack of effective customs enforcement."
The National Marine Fisheries Service is withdrawing a proposed expansion of its Seafood Import Monitoring Program to cover additional species, and will instead conduct a “comprehensive” review of SIMP to consider the overall direction of the program, it said in a notice released Nov. 14.
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.
A lead author of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is seeking to pass a law mandating the same treatment for goods containing cobalt refined in China. China’s Odious and Brutally Atrocious Labor Trafficking Supply Chain Act, or the Cobalt Supply Chain Act, would tell CBP that all cobalt refined in China should be banned from import, under the assumption it was mined wholly or in part with forced labor or child labor.
Suppliers are not really focusing on finding forced labor violations past a Tier 2 level, Pierfilippo Natta, KPMG's manager of Trade and Customs, said at a KPMG webinar Nov. 9. The survey that revealed that found 68% of companies surveyed only focused on supplier activity in Tier 1 and Tier 2, Natta said, while only 22% of those surveyed focused on Tier 3 and 19% on Tier 4.