The Center for Strategic and International Studies "Trade Guys" said that while there is some pressure on Congress to get the Generalized Systems of Preferences benefits program renewed, and restrict de minimis, competing pressures make it unlikely bills will become law this year.
The Commerce Department is amending the final results of an antidumping duty administrative review on xanthan gum from China (A-570-985) to align its revised results with the final decision in a court case that challenged rate calculations in those results. In that review, covering subject merchandise entered July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020, one company, Neimenggu Fufeng Biotechnologies Co., Ltd. and several affiliates, was given a zero percent AD rate, and three other companies were given rates above de minimis.
The second release of the Section 321 -- Does Not Exceed $800 in Aggregated Shipments deployment is now fully available in the ACE certification environment for testing, CBP said in an Aug. 20 update.
The Coalition for a Prosperous America, which advocates for protecting American manufacturing, said the new Senate Finance Committee bill to restrict de minimis moves "things in the right direction," even more than the bill that passed the House Ways and Means Committee in the spring.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that applying Section 301 tariffs to the contents of packages that previously benefited from de minimis, as proposed in the House (see 2407080049), would increase revenue from tariffs by about $23.5 billion in the 2024-2034 period, but would only require reprogramming of ACE and more money for data storage and ACE maintenance, not new CBP officers. The CBO estimated that improving ACE would cost $3 million, and that CBP would need $2 million annually to maintain the system.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
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As CBP deploys measures to ensure de minimis compliance among importers, there are some big-picture items that the agency and Congress need to consider to enable scalability or prevent loopholes, according to Lenny Feldman, managing partner with Sandler Travis.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., formally unveiled a widely anticipated bipartisan bill Aug. 8 that would restrict foreign goods from eligibility for de minimis shipments.
After its bid for a preliminary injunction was denied by Court of International Trade Judge Claire Kelly (see 2407260045), a customs broker fought Aug. 5 against a motion to dismiss its case, saying its complaint was ripe for litigation because CBP had already made the decision to deny its reinstatement to the agency's Entry Type 86 pilot (Seko Customs Brokerage v. United States, CIT # 24-00097).