In the January 25, 2012 issue of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bulletin (Vol. 46, No. 5), CBP proposes to correct the reasoning in two rulings and similar treatment on whether the blending of frozen broccoli and mixing of wine in a CBP bonded warehouse is a permissible manipulation under 19 USC 1562. The holdings of these two rulings are not proposed to change.
Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for January 17-20, 2012 in case they were missed last week.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative posted the January 17, 2012 remarks of Deputy USTR Sapiro during the U.S.-Egypt Business Council meeting. Sapiro described the U.S.' multilateral efforts to advance trade and investment in Egypt. She also stated that bilaterally, the U.S. is ready to work with its Egyptian counterparts to step up joint work in such areas as trade facilitation, services and investment, agriculture, good regulatory practices, as well as regional trade and investment arrangements. Among other things, USTR would like to see Egyptian companies take greater advantage of existing programs that would benefit Egyptian exports to U.S. markets, such as the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). According to Sapiro, the U.S. and Egypt plan to create a bilateral Action Plan to achieve their shared goals.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which began processing GSP duty refunds in early December for entries made during the period of January 1, 2011 through November 4, 2011, now states that refunds have been issued for all automatic refund requests (i.e., for entries that were filed duty-paid via ABI with the SPI "A"), except for ones that "failed" this refund process, which are being sent to the ports where entry was made to be manually processed. The target date for CBP completing the refund process for the SPI "A" failed entries is the end of February 2012.
Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for January 9-13, 2012 in case they were missed last week.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued a notice summarizing the results of the 2010 GSP Annual Review. It describes the disposition of the product petitions accepted for review in the 2010 GSP Annual Review and the status of country practices petitions accepted as part of GSP annual reviews, including the 2010 GSP Annual Review.
Proclamation 8770 to (i) remove certain non-down sleeping bags (not containing 20% or more by weight of feathers and/or down, HTS 9404.30.80) from eligibility for duty-free entry under the Generalized System of Preferences program for goods entered or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption on or after January 1, 2012, (ii) extend the Israel agriculture (butter, dried milk, cheese, peanuts, ice cream) tariff rate quotas, and (iii) make certain conforming changes to HTS Chapter 99 (HTS 9902.13.91 and 9902.13.92) that were inadvertently omitted from Proclamation 8742 on textile-bottomed footwear, is published in the January 4 Federal Register, along with its Annexes detailing the changes.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has announced the President's decision to designate all of the 40 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries currently eligible for African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade preferences and other benefits to remain eligible for such benefits in 2012. The President determined that no new countries would be added as AGOA beneficiaries.
On December 29, 2011, the President issued a Proclamation to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule to remove certain “non-down” sleeping bags from the Generalized System of Preferences program, make certain conforming changes that were inadvertently omitted from Proclamation 8742 on textile-bottomed footwear, and extend certain Israel agriculture tariff rate quotas through 2012. Details of these changes, contained in the Proclamation’s Annexes, are not expected to be available until the proclamation is published in the Federal Register.
Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for December 19-23, 2011 in case they were missed last week.