U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that FY 2011 distributions under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA, commonly referred to as the Byrd Amendment) are expected to be processed by November 29, 2011. In addition, it preliminary calculates that the withholding required by the Claims Resolution Act on the CDSOA for FY 2011 will be $7.95 million.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that officers in Chicago made an interesting discovery in outbound mail of a live Vietnam-era military incendiary device that was being shipped to Japan. CBP officers found the device while examining outbound mail packages. The item was manifested as a “military training dummie” valued at $55 and was being shipped from Missouri to Japan.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing an additional 30 day comment period for the proposed extension of its existing Foreign Trade Zone Annual Reconciliation Certification and Record Keeping Requirement information collection, which it plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget for review and approval.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting comments by January 9, 2012, on an existing information collection concerning the Entry Summary (CBP Form 7501). CBP is proposing to extend the expiration date of this information collection. CBP sources have stated by phone that there is no change to the information being collected, but the burden hours have been adjusted based on revised estimates by CBP.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the weekly foreign currency exchange rate multipliers for the week ending November 4, 2011.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS #11-000279 to announce the dates for its two technical seminars for trade software developers. One will target ocean and rail software developers and will focus on CAMIR and X12 message formats that are required as part of the M1 Ocean and Rail Manifest Deployment. The second seminar will target ABI participants and will focus on current and future ACE deployments. The seminars will be on November 29-30, 2011 and December 1-2, 2011 in the D.C. metro area. The anticipated cost is $120 per person, and no more than 3 from a company can attend. Hotel and payment information will be provided.

Sources at U.S. Customs and Border Protection state that the late October "limited deployment" testing of M1 (ocean and rail e-manifest) user screens by CBP officers at the ports of Baltimore, MD; Buffalo, NY; and Brownsville, TX did not start as planned, and a new schedule is expected to be announced soon. This pilot test will allow CBP officers to assess the use of M1 by its officers and early adopters in the trade.

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted to CBP's Web site as of November 3, 2011, 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 an updated list of companies/persons offering sea Automated Manifest System data processing services to the trade community.

This summary report highlights the most active textile and apparel tariff preference levels¹ from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s “Quota Weekly Commodity Status Report.” It also lists the TRQ commodities on CBP’s weekly “TRQ/TPL Threshold to Fill List.” Note that the fiscal year 2012 commodity TRQs reopened for a new quota period on October 1, 2011, as did the TPLs for the CBTPA.