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The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service needs to rethink “exorbitant” and “unfair” fee increases for agricultural quarantine and inspection services, according to a July 24 letter from 27 trade associations including the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America and the American Apparel & Footwear Association. The agency should withdraw the proposed rules it issued in April on AQI and overtime fee rates (see 14042321) so that industry can review the underlying data, they said.
A bonded carrier of merchandise imported under a transportation and exportation entry is only responsible for ensuring delivery, but CBP may ask for documents showing exportation in order to prove the merchandise was delivered, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on July 28 as it affirmed a judgment against C.H. Robinson. The carrier had been ordered by the Court of International Trade in 2012 to pay $106,407.86 in unpaid duties, taxes and interest for a shipment of wearing apparel from China that was allegedly diverted into the U.S. while en route to Mexico. The Appeals Court agreed that the CF 7512s stamped by a Laredo customs broker at an unmonitored CBP facility aren’t enough to prove C.H. Robinson fulfilled its responsibility to deliver the merchandise.
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A class 9 bonded warehouse operator may sell merchandise for domestic use in addition to duty-free goods, said CBP in a May 15 internal advice ruling, HQ H161256. The ruling comes in response to a request from the operator to the Port of New York/Newark that was passed up to headquarters. The internal advice request was submitted to CBP headquarters in 2011, the ruling said. Due "to changes in business conditions" the operator was considering selling merchandise to customers domestically in addition to duty-free merchandise and asked for agency input, said CBP.
CBP should require national customs broker permit holders to hire a certain number of licensed brokers in order to ensure responsible supervision and control when doing customs business, said the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) in a position paper. The paper describes the NCBFAA's various thoughts on how CBP should update customs broker regulations as it moves toward increased reliance on the national permit as part of the agency's modernization efforts. The Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations for CBP recently advised the agency to also install some employment requirements in the regulations, but did not offer specific numbers (see 14052209).
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CBP said the following customs broker licenses and all associated permits are canceled without prejudice:
Mexican, U.S. and Canadian trade officials are fully committed to developing and implementing a unified North American single window portal for the import and export of goods, but the broader trade agenda continues to take precedent over the initiative, said Mexican trade officials at a Peterson Institute of International Economics event on July 15. The U.S. is aiming to implement its single window, the Automated Commercial Environment and International Trade Data System, by 2016 and then will turn its attention to the unified portal, said CBP deputy commissioner Kevin McAleenan in June (see 14061803).
The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) will not move forward on a number of the agency's proposals that would have resulted in some new financial and licensing requirements for Ocean Transport Intermediaries (OTIs), said the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America. "Specifically, the FMC will not require any new license applications every two years, will not establish any summary revocation procedure for licenses, will not increase OTI bonds, will not establish any bond priority system or public filing of bond claims, will not establish regulations for advertising or the proposed rebuttable presumptions concerning the legality of actions by agents, and will not require all agency agreements to be in writing," the association said.