List 4A Tariff-Exclusion Requests End With Surge of 2,800 Last-Day Applications
U.S. importers of Chinese goods inundated the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with more than 2,800 List 4A tariff-exclusion requests in the 24 hours before the web portal went dark as scheduled at 11:59 p.m. EST Friday, showed our docket review. A huge backlog of List 3 exclusion requests awaits USTR disposition.
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Friday’s single-day List 4A tally was nearly a third of the 8,800 requests posted in the three months the portal was active, beginning at noon Halloween Day. Importers granted exclusions would qualify for refunds of the 15 percent duties paid on goods entering the country, retroactive to Sept. 1 when the tariffs took effect. The List 4A tariffs are scheduled for a Feb. 14 rollback to 7.5 percent when the U.S.-China phase one trade deal takes effect (see 2001160022).
We counted about a dozen consumer tech companies that waited to the end to file for List 4A exclusions, including Logitech, which filed all 30 of its requests Friday. Samsung's Harman International submitted 24 applications, all but one on the final day. GoPro posted 13, and HP 10, all in the final 24 hours. About two dozen more total filings came at the last minute from Alpine, ASA Electronics, Asus, Microsoft, Mitek and Sound United.
Several tech companies filed single applications for List 4A exemptions, waiting until the final day to do so. They included Intel, which said it’s “not aware of any large scale domestic manufacturing” in the U.S. of the solid-state drives it sources from China under the 8523.51.00.00 subheading.
Lyft can’t find U.S. sourcing for the “custom lithium-ion battery packs” at the scale it “requires for its e-bikes,” said its single request Friday. It imports them from China under the 8507.60.00.20 tariff code. “The U.S. suppliers that Lyft has surveyed are only able to offer battery packs at lower volumes,” it said.
Robotic lawn mowers “are a new product for iRobot, which plans to launch its first model” this year, said the vendor Friday in its only application. “There are only a handful of facilities globally that produce these goods, mainly in China,” sourced under the 8433.11.00.10 for electric lawn mowers, it said. IRobot ran a U.S. “beta trial” in the fall of a robotic lawn mower called Terra, said CEO Colin Angle on a Q3 call in October. It plans a modest 2020 rollout, with “larger-scale commercial launches” in spring 2021, he said then.
Applicants in the three-month List 4A proceeding sought exclusions 128 times for goods imported under 8517.62.00.90, more than for any other consumer tech category, the docket shows. That subheading covers a wide swath of tech goods, including smart speakers, Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches and fitness trackers. Speaker vendors filed 52 exclusion requests for 8518.22.00.00 goods. Flat-panel TV importers, including TCL (see 2001240060), Vizio (see 2001080011) and others, submitted 20 applications.
All exclusion requests get elevated automatically to a “Stage 2" administrative hold once their 14-day public comment periods expire. No requests submitted in List 4A are above Stage 2, including those filed opening day, the docket shows. Successful applications ultimately will rise to Stage 4, when the requests are granted and scheduled for Federal Register publication.
Backlogs abound in the List 3 exclusions process that closed more than four months ago and drew 30,000-plus requests, that docket shows. USTR granted 526 requests in seven tranches between Aug. 7 and Friday. It denied about 12,200 and advanced a few hundred more to Stage 3. More than 17,000 applications remain at Stage 2, including some held there since early summer. USTR didn’t comment Monday.