In the February 15, 2012 issue of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bulletin (Vol. 46, No. 8), CBP published a notice on its revocation of a ruling and treatment regarding the tariff classification of play paper money.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is advising that any carriers who have their type 2 carrier bond obligated for ACE Truck generated in-bonds, to not use the new ACE “In-bond Authorization” function at this time.

The Los Angeles Field Operations unit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a Public Bulletin stating that due to budgetary constraints, CBP can no longer guarantee that funding for construction, equipment and/or additional personnel will be available for new or expanded "extenal stakeholder" international passenger and cargo processing facilities, While each situation will be reviewed on an individual basis, LA CBP states that any plans for new or expanded facilities should be made with this budget constraint in mind.

The Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport has issued a Public Bulletin announce that it will hold an updated Steel Identification, Classification, and Trade Law seminar on March 27-29, 2012. The seminar program, presented by technical, commercial, and legal experts from the steel industry, aims to increase the knowledge of the trade and the Customs broker community. It will include material on fraud, circumvention, evasion, and current issues. The seminar will be held at the Port of Long Beach Harbor Department Administration Building, 6th floor auditorium, 925 Harbor Plaza, Long Beach, CA. Registration is required by March 5, 2012 to attend this free seminar. Public Bulletin #LA12-004 and seminar registration form are available via email by sending a request to documents@brokerpower.com.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the following releases on commercial trade and related issues:

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the International Trade Administration posted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Web site as of February 21, 2012, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. These messages are available by searching on the listed CBP message number at http://addcvd.cbp.gov.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the end of the year 2011 weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of December 30, 2011. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, and tobacco; and certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, OFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs; etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, OFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying textile articles and/or other articles; the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics; etc.

In early January 2012, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued instructions for the ten weekly Special Import Quota announcements for Upland Cotton that were issued by the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation. CBP also listed the dates and quantities for each of the ten. In February, CBP added weekly Special Quotas 22 - 26, and now is restarting the numbering system by adding Special Quota 1 to its list. CBP's instructions, with the new quota added, are summarized below. (Note that ITT has corrected the typos in the "buy date" column.)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the following forms and information related to the Automated Export System (AES):

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is extending the comment period by 30 days for an existing information collection concerning NAFTA Regulations and Certificates of Origin and Verification (CBP Forms 434 and 446) and new CBP Form 447 (NAFTA Motor Vehicle Averaging Election), which it plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. CBP is proposing that this information collection be extended with a change to the burden hours. CBP published the information collection for comment in December 2011 and is now allowing an additional 30 days for comments, until March 22, 2012 (from February 7, 2012).