Imported goods subject to heading 9903 tariff subheadings, including goods from China, may qualify for informal entry only if the goods are valued at $250 or less, CBP indicated in answers to questions posed by the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America at a recent meeting.
Alexandra Hess, a former official at CBP, has rejoined Cassidy Levy as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office, the firm announced on LinkedIn. At CBP, Hess served as branch chief for entry process and duty refunds in the Office of Regulations & Rulings, where she "issued rulings and advice" on "the entry process, duty drawback, de minimis, reconciliation, bonding, antidumping and countervailing duties, temporary importation under bond, foreign trade zones, right to make entry, broker compliance and management, and quota," the firm said.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America supports the National Marine Fisheries Service's efforts to automate entry processing for seafood imports, although the trade association also said NMFS needs to address some outstanding issues stemming from that agency's efforts to create a streamlined process that can parse out restricted shipments from non-restricted shipments, according to a Feb. 18 comment submitted to NMFS.
The Alliance for Chemical Distribution asked the Trump administration to support a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program in Congress. The GSP program has been expired for more than four years.
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President Donald Trump's plan to remove the de minimis exemption from goods made in China and Hong Kong may just be the start of a bigger push to remove that exemption from other countries, according to trade experts speaking during a Feb. 13 webinar sponsored by ShipHero, a warehouse management system provider for e-commerce and third-party logistics firms.
In a Feb. 14 email alert to members, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America warned that CBP has accepted some entries made by members even though those entries don't have proper duty calculations or new import duties on China that were mandated under President Donald Trump's executive order last week.
CBP's Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee will be holding its quarterly meeting on March 5 in Atlanta, according to a Federal Register notice.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
President Donald Trump's chief spokesman from his first term said that half-baked orders from the White House -- like an order to end de minimis for Chinese goods that CBP was not ready to implement -- is in part a result of Trump's memories of his staff trying to slow-walk and stop his tariff ideas.