A recent Court of International Trade decision says domestic industry can’t use the interested party petition process to challenge individual entries, and are instead limited to challenges of how CBP treats the category of merchandise as a whole, customs lawyer Larry Richardson of Barnes Richardson said in a blog post April 4.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP created Harmonized System Update (HSU) 2208 on April 1, containing 531 Automated Broker Interface records and 114 Harmonized Tariff Schedule records, it said in a CSMS message. The update includes changes related to an agreement on Section 232 tariffs between the U.S. and Japan, as well as "updates to the PGA Message Set. Participating Government Agency (PGA) indicators for FDA, FWS, and AMS were updated," CBP said.
CBP released guidance on a new tariff rate quota on Japanese steel April 1, the date that the TRQ takes effect. Under the quarterly TRQ, agreed to in February as part of a deal on Section 232 tariffs (see 2202070064), steel subject to the tariffs entered under quota will be free of any Section 232 duty, CBP said. “Subject entries that enter after each quota fills are subject to Section 232 duties under HTS 9903.80.01,” it said.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai endorsed the Level the Playing Act during a four-hour hearing in front of the House Ways and Means Committee after one of its House sponsors noted the House and the Senate are about to go to conference, and the proposal to rewrite antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws is going to be on the table.
Deep in the White House budget proposal, the administration projects that after collecting $93 billion in duties in the current fiscal year, only $54 billion will be collected between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30, 2023. It projects collections would drop further to $46 billion in fiscal year 2024 before gradually climbing to $60 billion in 2032. Last year's budget projected that there would only be $57 billion in duties collected in this fiscal year, and $45 billion next fiscal year.
The tariff rate quota arrangement that the U.S. offered the U.K. covers a higher volume of steel than the U.K. exported to the U.S. in 2018 and 2019, though those quotas also cover steel with EU country of origin that was melted and poured in the U.K.
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The U.S. and U.K. reached an agreement that will drop Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the U.K. Under the deal, the U.S. will allow “historically-based sustainable volumes” of U.K. steel and aluminum goods to enter the country, the Commerce Department said, adding that it will lift the tariffs June 1. The U.S. will also require any U.K. steel company owned by a Chinese entity to undergo a financial audit “to assess influence” from the Chinese government.
The top trade official in the British government and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said they want to do even more trade and investment between the two countries, even as a free-trade agreement is not the end goal. Secretary of State for International Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan had hoped that the Biden administration would continue the free trade negotiations started during the Trump administration, but that has not happened. Marjorie Chorlins, who leads the U.S.-U.K. Business Council at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also spoke at the March 21 plenary in Baltimore, saying the business community strongly supports more U.S.-U.K. economic cooperation.