Trade associations representing several industries on Sept. 22 united to promote the continuation in NAFTA of a stable and certain investor-state dispute settlement system, amid concerns the Trump administration will move to change or remove ISDS provisions from the deal (see 1708090014 and 1708250013). Anything that would weaken or “not guarantee” ISDS in NAFTA would have costs for U.S. foreign investments and would translate to harming U.S. jobs, National Association of Manufacturers Vice President for International Economic Affairs Policy Linda Dempsey said on a conference call with reporters. Select changes or a lack of certainty with regard to ISDS in NAFTA wouldn’t just hurt “the direct jobs that we see of the exports of pipe or steel, or mining equipment, or all of these other types of products; it’s the jobs associated in those communities -- the suppliers, the small businesses that support the production in those communities,” she said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 11-15 in case they were missed.
CBP is aiming to release rules for entry filings of goods valued under the $800 de minimis threshold "before the end of the calendar year," said Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner for the CBP Office of Trade, on Sept. 12 during the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference in Washington. CBP knows "it's a big deal" to customs brokers "whether we require the classification on all small packages," she said. It's a "thorny issue," but "I think we are close to having kind of the final conversations," so "look forward to that in the next couple months."
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 5-8 in case they were missed.
CBP’s Office of Field Operations has tentatively come up with some “parameters” for how it will handle Section 321 clearances going forward, said Jim Swanson, CBP director-cargo conveyance security and controls, at a National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference on Sept. 11. The agency has agreed on a two-track solution, allowing continued clearance in the Automated Manifest System while providing new capabilities for Section 321 in the Automated Broker Interface, he said. ABI filing will include a 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule number as a data element, with the importer of record potentially optional, he said.
Reconciling U.S., Mexican and Canadian de minimis levels, and lowering the U.S.’s current $800 level if necessary, could prove difficult within NAFTA renegotations, Jon Kent, a lobbyist for the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America, said Sept. 11 during the NCBFAA Government Affairs Conference. While some believe that raised de minimis levels are good for U.S. small businesses, Kent believes that’s a “fairy tale” that rapidly increased imports. “It chews up a lot of business,” Kent said of the U.S.’s now $800 de minimis level.
The Justice Department’s recent intervention in a whistleblower case against a UK retailer that allegedly split shipments on its U.S. imports to avoid duties “sends a clear message that this behavior will not be tolerated,” said the law firm Constantine Cannon, which represents the whistleblower, in a Sept. 8 press release. The July complaint alleges that Pure Collection and its executive Samantha Harrison deliberately split large orders so their shipments to the U.S. would fall under the $200 de minimis threshold, later raised to $800, despite knowing the practice violated customs rules.
Trade executives agreed during a Sept. 6 conference that better alignment of NAFTA de minimis levels could benefit commerce, but offered different opinions on the best path toward uniformity. Jon Kent, who lobbies for the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA), said during the Air Cargo Industry Summit that there should be a “reconciliation” between de minimis thresholds in the U.S., Canada and Mexico but that the U.S. $800 level might not be the optimal benchmark. He suggested the Trump administration might even consider reducing the level to help close the gap between the U.S. standard and Canada’s $15 threshold and Mexico’s $50 benchmark. “You’re importing huge quantities of goods,” he said. “I don’t know how the administration can reconcile that big jump in imports with its own predispositions.”
CBP and other agencies involved in trade still have some ways to go before resolving an ongoing debate on how to describe goods in Section 321 shipments, said Christa Brzozowski, deputy assistant secretary for trade and transport at the Department of Homeland Security, at the U.S. Air Cargo Industry Affairs Summit Sept. 6 in Washington. The government still needs to work through process issues related to what goods are eligible for expedited release, and what role partner government agencies (PGAs) will have in the process, before considering whether to require 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule numbers or written descriptors, she said.
NAFTA talks probably will extend past the U.S.’s hoped-for deadline of Dec. 31, as major differences among the three parties involved start to emerge and the U.S. lacks political direction on several fundamental issues, trade analysts said Sept. 5. The U.S. during the second round of renegotiations Sept. 1-5 in Mexico City floated domestic content requirements for automobiles under NAFTA, but didn’t put forth a definitive threshold, a trade lobbyist said. U.S. negotiators have bandied about the possibility of a 35 percent to 50 percent requirement for U.S. automobile content, and are likely to go to the third round in Ottawa with a more specific proposal, the lobbyist said.