CBP “must process and pay substitution drawback claims” for excise taxes that were previously prohibited under regulations struck down by a Court of International Trade judgment Feb. 18, according to a copy of the order added to the CIT website on Feb. 25. The judgment invalidates portions of CBP’s regulations, as amended following passage of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, that sought to prevent “double drawback” for claims involving excise taxes, including amended definitions of “drawback” and “drawback claim” under the 2017 drawback regulations (see 1812170013).
CBP and the trade community again face difficult decisions on how to move forward with mandatory continuing education for customs brokers. The toughest may be how to create a fair accreditation scheme, but that’s just one of many open questions as a joint task force again attempts to find some resolution of issues that caused continuing education to fall off CBP’s agenda nearly a half-decade ago.
The National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones appealed to CBP officials during the group's annual legislative summit on Feb. 11 on the issue of CBP's treatment of goods that are in foreign-trade zones and are subject to the Section 301 tariffs on goods from China that will be reduced on Feb. 14. CBP said in a recent CSMS message about the tariff decrease that the applicable tariff rate for goods in FTZs is based on “the rate of duty and tax in force on the date of filing the application for privileged foreign status.” That policy has prompted some industry claims of inconsistency by the agency (see 2002050038).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
The following is a selection of articles that appeared in International Trade Today in 2019 covering ruling letters. CBP frequently publishes rulings months after they are issued, so these articles are included based on the dates the articles were published, rather than the date the ruling letter was issued.
CBP published several thousand prospective rulings in 2019 on its Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) database. The agency issues its rulings from either the National Commodity Specialist Division in New York, which handles issues like classification, country of origin, marking and preferential treatment, or the Office of Regulations and Rulings at CBP headquarters in Washington, D.C., which may also decide other issues, such as valuation, drawback, exclusion order enforcement and liquidation.
Recent CBP regulations limiting the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes look set to be invalidated, after the Court of International Trade issued a decision Jan. 24 that found those limits contradict the legal framework created by Congress for drawback and legislative intent to expand the duty savings program.
The Court of International Trade issued a decision late on Jan. 24 finding recent CBP regulations limiting the amount of drawback that can be claimed on excise taxes were "unlawful." The court held that a final rule issued by CBP in December 2018 that aimed to prevent so-called “double drawback” contradicts the legal framework created by Congress for drawback.