The Commerce Department last week issued new antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, which, most notably, lifted the prohibition on the consideration of transnational subsidies in CVD cases (see 2403210070).
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
PHILADELPHIA -- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the "de minimis exception" impacts CBP's work to stop illegal drugs and other contraband from entering the United States.
PHILADELPHIA -- When CBP ran an audit to estimate how many packages that enter under de minimis violate Customs laws, it found about 9% did, either through misclassification, insufficient documentation, or more serious violations, like smuggling narcotics.
PHILADELPHIA -- Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner, said that since stakeholders have said they're concerned that de minimis and trade cheating in USMCA and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement is damaging the domestic and Latin American textile and apparel industries, the department will release a comprehensive plan to intensify enforcement soon.
PHILADELPHIA -- Bill Reinsch, a senior scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner AnnMarie Highsmith that he is pessimistic Congress will vote on any trade bill, whether liberalizing trade, as in the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program or the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, or restricting it, as in changes to de minimis eligibility or changes to trade remedy laws.
Although the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee has been pushing to exclude Chinese goods from de minimis (see 2403060089), interviews this week with a half-dozen members of the 42-person committee show the momentum for changing the law is fairly muted.
CBP will update ACE April 13 to enforce a shorter time frame requirement for filing type 86 entries, the agency said in a March 21 CSMS message. This announcement follows a Jan. 16 Federal Register notice that, among other changes, shortened the deadline for filing type 86 entries from 15 days after arrival -- the same as the deadline for formal entries -- to “upon or prior to arrival” of the shipment (see 2401120070).
The funding package that is expected to pass Congress later this week adds $19,968,000 in funding for DHS to detect and detain goods produced with forced labor over the amount in last year's budget. The funding, which is meant to be spent before the end of September this year, dedicates $114.5 million annually to enforcing the ban on the importation of goods made with forced labor.
The Commerce Department is amending the final results of a countervailing duty administrative review on certain corrosion-resistant steel products from South Korea (C-580-879) to align a duty calculation for Hyundai Steel Company with the final decision in a court case challenging the original administrative review results. In the final results of that review, covering calendar year 2018, Commerce assigned to Hyundai Steel Company, the mandatory respondent, a CV duty cash deposit rate of 0.51%.