Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed that her government is considering imposing tariffs on countries with which Mexico doesn't have a trade agreement, including China.
CBP is correcting mistakes it made in an interim final rule published in January amending regulations for the USMCA, the agency said in a notice to be published Sept. 8. CBP said that the USMCA IFR "inadvertently omitted" a conforming amendment, removed paragraphs unrelated to USMCA amendments, and contained an "inaccurate amendatory instruction." The omitted amendment was the instructions for 19 CFR 10.224 and the removed paragraphs were from 19 CFR 10.237 and 113.62. The inaccurate amendatory instruction led to the omission of an amendment to the Appendix to 19 CFR part 163.
It's unlikely -- but not impossible -- that an importer will be able to obtain a refund on paying fentanyl tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act when the importer hadn't claimed USMCA at entry beforehand, according to trade attorney Michael Roll, who was speaking on a Sept. 3 webinar sponsored by A.N. Deringer.
Trade attorneys helping importers comply with duty collection regulations are seeing Customs officials increase their scrutiny of entry filings via a higher rate of CF-28 forms being sent to companies, according to comments made during various webinars this week.
The Commerce Department published notices in the Federal Register Sept. 4 on the following antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) proceedings (any notices that announce changes to AD/CVD rates, scope, affected firms or effective dates will be detailed in another ITT article):
House Ways and Means Committee members met with Mexico's Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard about the upcoming sunset review of USMCA, and two Republicans on the committee said most of the conversation was about how useful the free trade agreement is.
The U.S. invoked the rapid response labor mechanism under USMCA to investigate a Mexican meat processing facility. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that it had received a petition alleging that workers at the Alimentos Grole facility in Mexico are being denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The U.S. has therefore suspended liquidation of unliquidated entries of goods from the facility.
Although CBP has provided guidance on how to file entries for steel and aluminum derivatives under the Section 232 tariffs, some trade community members are still unclear about how to determine the value of the steel or aluminum content in more complex situations, according to trade attorney George Tuttle, speaking on an Aug. 27 webinar.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada is dropping its retaliatory tariffs on American exports -- except for those in steel, aluminum and autos -- as long as those U.S. goods qualify for USMCA.
EU Trade Minister Maros Sefcovic said that the EU "will need to translate key elements of the joint statement into legislative proposals," and that politicians have a "firm intention" to "present these legislative proposals and launch this process still this month."