International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Feb. 10-14 in case they were missed.
CBP and the trade community again face difficult decisions on how to move forward with mandatory continuing education for customs brokers. The toughest may be how to create a fair accreditation scheme, but that’s just one of many open questions as a joint task force again attempts to find some resolution of issues that caused continuing education to fall off CBP’s agenda nearly a half-decade ago.
President Donald Trump's recent executive order to strengthen e-commerce enforcement may pose hurdles to trade professionals, experts told us. The EO (see 2001310061) is ambiguous, and how Customs and Border Protection plans to heed the order's call to restrict access to importer of record numbers based on customs and intellectual property rights violations is unclear, said Sandler Travis lawyer Paula Connelly in an interview. The EO says customs brokers and express shippers would be responsible for determining if a foreign importer is trying to get around a past debarment, for instance, by changing the company's name. National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America President Amy Magnus said brokers aren't investigators, but “there’s going to be an expectation that we’re going to be more involved in the vetting and sort of screening of all parties.” The White House didn't comment Tuesday.
President Donald Trump's recent executive order to strengthen e-commerce enforcement may pose hurdles to trade professionals, experts told us. The EO (see 2001310061) is ambiguous, and how Customs and Border Protection plans to heed the order's call to restrict access to importer of record numbers based on customs and intellectual property rights violations is unclear, said Sandler Travis lawyer Paula Connelly in an interview. The EO says customs brokers and express shippers would be responsible for determining if a foreign importer is trying to get around a past debarment, for instance, by changing the company's name. National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America President Amy Magnus said brokers aren't investigators, but “there’s going to be an expectation that we’re going to be more involved in the vetting and sort of screening of all parties.” The White House didn't comment Tuesday.
The National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones appealed to CBP officials during the group's annual legislative summit on Feb. 11 on the issue of CBP's treatment of goods that are in foreign-trade zones and are subject to the Section 301 tariffs on goods from China that will be reduced on Feb. 14. CBP said in a recent CSMS message about the tariff decrease that the applicable tariff rate for goods in FTZs is based on “the rate of duty and tax in force on the date of filing the application for privileged foreign status.” That policy has prompted some industry claims of inconsistency by the agency (see 2002050038).
A California state appeals court on Feb. 4 found a customs brokerage can’t enforce a noncompete agreement against its former employee. Hecny Brokerage’s agreement with its longtime employee Madeline Sopko was too broad too meet California’s strict limits on noncompete clauses, and Sopko’s national permit and work with clients nationwide made it too difficult to narrow the noncompete’s geographical scope to fit California’s strict requirements, the court said.
The recent executive order to strengthen e-commerce enforcement is ambiguous, and how CBP plans to heed the order's call to restrict access to importer of record numbers based on customs and intellectual property rights violations is unclear, Sandler Travis lawyer Paula Connelly said. That's because, currently, domestic importers use their tax IDs to register with CBP, and only companies that have no offices in the U.S. file for an importer of record number.
CBP's notice on the coming Section 301 tariff decrease (see 2002040045) and the agency's treatment of List 4A goods in foreign-trade zones are drawing some industry concerns. The CBP notice said the duty rate for goods subject to the tariffs in FTZs is based on “the rate of duty and tax in force on the date of filing the application for privileged foreign status.” CBP's interpretation “is inconsistent with existing CBP precedent and [we] will be challenging it on behalf of our a number of clients,” said Sidley lawyer Ted Murphy in a blog post.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is set to require filing of its “core” partner government agency (PGA) data in ACE beginning Aug. 3, 2020, the agency said in a notice. “On that date, APHIS intends to begin applying Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) flags, which will alert filers who opt to submit data electronically whether APHIS import data is or may be required. Importers or brokers using ACE must enter APHIS-required import data when they receive an APHIS-specific HTS flag in order to complete their entry in the system,” APHIS said.