The Federal Maritime Commission is preparing for another uptick in enforcement and is expecting a range of rulemakings to be finalized during or before FY 2025, including a new charge complaint process, a new container data collection effort and a new electronic court case management system. The commission previewed those updates as part of a $48.4 million congressional funding request released this week for FY 2025 -- about a $5 million increase from the $43.7 million it requested the previous year (see 2303200063).
Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.
Former President Donald Trump defended his proposal to increase tariffs on all imports by 10% (see 2308290005), saying it would incentivize American and foreign companies to build factories in the U.S. instead of other countries.
International Trade Commissioners grappled with how they should fulfill the administration's request for a report on the export competitiveness of the Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian, Indonesian and Pakistani apparel sectors over the last 11 years -- is it to uncover how those countries' successes could offer lessons to other developing countries that want to industrialize? Is the success of Bangladesh, which is near to crossing the threshold into a middle-income country largely on the strength of its garment sector, a country with an "unnatural and unfair advantage," because of its suppression of unions and wages, as the AFL-CIO's Eric Gottwald asserted?
House Ways and Means Subcommitee Chair Mike Kelly, R-Pa., warned that the committee would not "stand by idly and watch the Biden administration and Treasury Department sacrifice American tax dollars for political gain." Kelly, who was holding a hearing this week on the implications of international negotiations on extra-territorial taxes, including digital services taxes, said the draft deal at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will disadvantage U.S. firms.
Customs brokers have been pushing for a change to U.S. bankruptcy law for decades to make it so pass-through payments to CBP for tariffs are not subject to clawback after a client goes bankrupt. With a package of funding bills the Senate passed March 8, brokers got a permanent change to the law.
Democrats that represent Michigan and Ohio, where Big 3 automakers' plants are concentrated, are asking that the Section 301 review hike tariffs on Chinese automakers. Section 301 tariffs already apply a 25% tariff, making the total duty for a Chinese auto 27.5%.
A bipartisan bill sponsored by a half-dozen House members from Florida -- though none on the Ways and Means Committee -- offers full refunds for tariffs paid for imports of goods that should have been covered by the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program. It also renews the program through the end of 2029.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.
USDA is increasing the FY 2024 tariff rate quota for raw cane sugar by 125,000 metric tons raw value, it said in a notice released March 6. The increase brings the total FY 2024 TRQ, originally set at the 1,117,195 MTRV minimum mandated by the World Trade Organization, to 1,242,195 MTRV, USDA said. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will allocate the increase among supplying countries and customs areas. Raw cane sugar under this quota must be accompanied by a certificate for quota eligibility.