The Court of International Trade in a Sept. 6 opinion rejected a U.S. motion to dismiss cases from three importers challenging the Commerce Department's denial of their Section 233 steel tariff exclusion requests. The government said the cases should be tossed since they concern entries that already had been finally liquidated, but Judge M. Miller Baker held that it's possible for the court to order liquidation in Administrative Procedure Act cases brought under Section 1581(i), even if liquidation is final.
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., is drafting legislation that could lead to new oversight over certain rail storage charges assessed by ocean common carriers against shippers on through bills of lading. The bill, which hasn't been completed, could require the Federal Maritime Commission and the Surface Transportation Board to “get together” and decide who should regulate those charges, a Garamendi staffer told us.
The Customs Business Fairness Act, a change to bankruptcy law that protects customs brokers, was in effect in 2021, but only as a temporary measure. Its proponents failed to pass a permanent change in 2022. The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America has made a significant advance in the more than 20-year fight to make it so that the money that brokers' clients give them to send to CBP to pay tariffs is not subject to clawback after a bankruptcy filing. The clawback provisions are there so that company insiders don't strip a company of assets through bonuses or other special financial treatment to preferred vendors in the last three months before a filing.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is extending 77 COVID-19-related tariff exclusions as well as the 352 Section 301 exclusions that were restored in March 2022. Both sets of exclusions, which were to expire at the end of September, will last through Dec. 31.
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China exports squid and tuna to the U.S. from its distant water fishing fleet, which "is characterized by numerous reported incidents of forced labor. The majority of the crew on board the vessels in this fleet are migrant workers from Indonesia and the Philippines, who are particularly vulnerable to forced labor," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a report to Congress sent last week. This was the first time that the report on illegal fishing, which comes out every two years, covered forced labor.
One-step step stools are correctly classified according to their constituent materials and not as furniture, CBP headquarters said in a recently released ruling.
Four witnesses asked Congress to pass Level the Playing Field Act 2.0, a proposal that would change trade remedy laws in favor of domestic manufacturers, at a House hearing called the "Chinese Communist Party Threat to American Manufacturing."
Market and geopolitical risk analysts said everything has gone wrong, undermining supply chain reliability over the last several years, and businesses are creating redundancy but are still anxious about the additional costs that entails.
Sixteen state attorneys general are asking the Security and Exchange Commission to block the listing of SHEIN -- or any other foreign-owned firm -- on a U.S. stock exchange unless a "truly independent" certification can be made that the company does not export goods made with forced labor.