U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice announcing that the U.S. Trade Representative has negotiated a Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) hand-loomed and folklore agreement with Cambodia that meets the requirements of the "certified hand-loomed and folklore" provision in HTS Section XI, Additional U.S. Note 2.1
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued a notice announcing the fourteen products that are accepted for further review and nine country practice petitions that were filed or are ongoing for the 2008 Generalized System of Preferences Annual Review and setting forth the schedule for these petitions.
On July 25, 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection published a proposed rule to amend its regulations in order to uniformly apply the tariff shift and other rules in 19 CFR Part 1021 to allcountry of origin or "product of" determinations made under the customs and related laws, the navigation laws of the U.S., and the CBP regulations, unless:
The International Trade Commission has released its The Year in Trade 2007 report, its annual overview of the previous year's trade-related activities.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing recent changes to the 2008 Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HS Update No. 0804), which include the following:
On July 29, 2008, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6560, a bill that would extend the Generalized System of Preferences program for one year, create a Dominican Republic "2 for 1" program for certain cotton apparel, repeal the "abundant supply" provisions of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, etc.
European Union member states have adopted a new regulation applying the European Commission's (EC's) Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for the period from January 1, 2009 until the end of 2011 for the benefit of certain developing countries.
CBP has issued the June 2008 ACE Trade Account Owner monthly update as an attachment to an ACE Portal Accounts CSMS message. The update covers the following topics: the introduction of ACE "ad hoc" reporting capabilities, new contact information for the technology support center, ACE Account Revenue report enhancements, the posting of the "draft" M1 version of the CAMIR (Amendment 11) and X12 transaction sets, and new features that will be available in ACE with the deployment of ACE A2.1/M1 Ocean and Rail e-Manifest. (June 2008 TAO update available at http://apps.cbp.gov/csms/docs/17122_1004847298/June_2008_TAO_V4.pdf.)
The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program (i.e., A, A*, and A) for most beneficiary countries, i.e., other than those listed as African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) beneficiary countries, will expire on December 31, 2008, unless a law extending it is enacted.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued a notice announcing the results of the Annual Product and Country Practices Reviews on intellectual property rights (IPR) and worker rights, which were conducted as part of the 2007 Generalized System of Preferences Annual Review.