The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued a new product exclusion for motorboats from Section 301 tariffs on the third list of products from China, according to a pre-publication copy of a notice posted to the agency’s website June 19. The exclusion will apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the tariffs on the third list took effect, and will remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020. The new exclusion will fall under previously created subheading 9903.88.48.
The U.S. in April imported more laptops and tablets than in any previous April in the category's history, according to Census Bureau data accessed June 15 through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb tool. It was clear evidence of the surge in demand for work-from-home and remote-learning productivity tools after COVID-19 forced much of the U.S. into sudden lockdowns.
Importers may want to delay filing for U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement reconciliation because the USMCA currently doesn't allow for post-entry refunds of merchandise processing fees, CBP officials said during a National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones webinar on June 16. Maya Kamar, CBP director for textiles and trade agreements, said that although the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is working with Congress for a legislative fix to the issue, CBP doesn't yet have clarity on whether such a bill will pass (see 2006050034).
The International Trade Commission on June 12 posted new Revision 13 to the 2020 Harmonized Tariff Schedule. This latest revision implements a round of exclusions from the fourth tranche of Section 301 tariffs on products from China, under subheading 9903.88.49 and U.S. note 20(bbb) to subchapter III of chapter 99 (see 2006090018). The ITC also amended an existing exclusion from the tariffs for certain pill crushing and grinding machines of subheading 8479.82.0080, per a USTR notice issued June 8.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP added on June 4 the ability in ACE for importers to file entries with recently excluded goods in the third tranche of Section 301 tariffs, it said in a CSMS message. The official Office of the U.S. Trade Representative notice for the exclusions was published May 28 (see 2005220020). The exclusions are in subheading 9903.88.48. The exclusions are available for any product that meets the description in the Annex to USTR’s notice, regardless of whether the importer filed an exclusion request. The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the tariffs on the third list took effect, and remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020. The CSMS message also includes a summary of Section 301 duties that shows information on each tranche of tariffs and granted product exclusions.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on June 10. The following headquarters rulings were modified recently, according to CBP:
Aluminum waste recovered from a manufacturing process in a foreign-trade zone is not subject to Section 232 tariffs or to antidumping and countervailing duties upon entry, CBP said in a May 8 ruling. Shannon Fura, a lawyer with Page Fura, sought CBP's ruling on behalf of the U.S. Granules Corp. (USGC). The company buys aluminum scrap and waste from suppliers that generate recoverable aluminum from manufacturing operations within an FTZ, it said.
The Aluminum Extruders Council pointed to the closure of Alcoa's Intalco Works in Ferndale, Washington, as proof that Section 232 is not helping the aluminum industry, and said that since there is no longer a source of domestic billets west of the Mississippi River, they have to import. But both domestic and foreign supply of aluminum billets is more expensive than it would be in other countries, so domestic extruders are at a price disadvantage. Exporters circumvent Section 232 -- which covers aluminum extrusions -- by doing further fabricating of the extrusions and classifying them under a subheading not covered in Section 232, the group said. “The truth is, no one is going to build primary aluminum production in the U.S. with or without the 232,” the group said in a June 9 press release. “It is time for the Administration to re-examine its policy in this area. We applaud their goal. We really do. However, the path they have taken has been proven to be ineffective, and ultimately counterproductive.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced a new round of Section 301 tariff exclusions (see 2006090003). New subheading 9903.88.49 will be used for the new exclusions. The new set of exclusions are reflected in “two 10-digit [Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS)] subheadings and 32 specially prepared product descriptions, which together respond to 55 separate exclusion requests,” according to the notice. The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 1, 2019, and will remain in effect until Sept. 1, 2020.