U.S. Customs and Border Protection has previously issued a general notice announcing that the 2009 annual user fee of $138 assessed for each customs broker permit and national permit held by an individual, partnership, association, or corporation is due by January 23, 2009.
The Federal Maritime Commission has issued a notice announcing that on January 14, 2009, the Commissioners voted to deny requests for expedited reviews of:
CBP has issued its weekly tariff rate quota (TRQ) and tariff preference level (TPL) commodity report as of January 12, 2009. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, tobacco, certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying apparel and/or other textile articles, the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc. (Note that CBP also recently posted a January 8, 2009 version of this report.) (Weekly commodity report available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/trade_programs/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a memorandum titled: "US-Oman Free Trade Agreement Implementation Instructions," that provides instructions for the filing and acceptance of claims for preferential treatment of goods under the U.S.- Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA, or UOFTA).
On December 31, 2008, President Bush issued Proclamation 8332 to amend the Harmonized Tariff Schedule to implement the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA) effective for qualifying goods entered or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption on or after January 1, 2009.
BP is correcting its January 9, 2009 ITT to state that U.S. Customs Border and Protection has issued a notice announcing that the following Customs broker licenses are cancelled without prejudice (BP previously incorrectly stated that such licenses were cancelled with prejudice):
The following are the trade-related bills and resolutions that were introduced in the House or Senate during January 8-9, 2009:
The Transportation Security Administration has issued a press release announcing the completion of over 1 million fingerprint-based background checks on truck drivers required to carry a Hazardous Material Endorsement (HME) on a commercial driver's license. Since starting operations almost four years ago, the HME Threat Assessment Program has completed a review of 1,015,660 applications and approved more than 1 million. (TSA Press Release 12/29/08, available at http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2008/1229.shtm)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted penalty mitigation guidelines for violations of the mandatory Automated Export System (AES) filing requirements and other Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR, 15 CFR Part 30). The guidelines are effective on February 1, 2009 for violations occurring on or after February 1, 2009.
In a revised frequently-asked-questions document, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has added an additional method to meet the requirement in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA1) that certificates of conformity "accompany" each product or shipment of products required to have such certificates.2