U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI administrative message announcing that on January 26, 2008, a programming enhancement is scheduled to go to production that will extend to truck carriers and brokers the capability to arrive and export in-bonds by container/equipment.
An FTC decision on the Google-DoubleClick merger is “imminent,” Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester told reporters during a Tuesday conference call. “It could be this week, could be before the end of the year,” he said. The merger is “far more important in terms of media diversity… than what’s going on at the FCC,” he said. “We need to reiterate the need to address privacy concerns as part of this review,” he said, saying “a number of commissioners are concerned” and “if the commissioners fail to act… it will be a violation of trust, an abuse of their own role.” An EU hearing is set Jan. 21. FTC Chairman Deborah Majoras’ decision not to recuse herself from the merger review was “unprofessional,” he said. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, agreed that Majoras hasn’t “satisfactorily answered the questions” about remaining involved in the matter. EPIC has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for details, not to delay the merger as some have alleged, he said. EPIC is building a legal challenge to Majoras’ refusal to recuse herself, and this could be made in an appeal of a merger approval if it comes soon, he said. European consumer group BEUC amplified those concerns in a Tuesday letter to Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner. DoubleClick’s ad-serving tools, offered on a standalone basis and not controlled by DoubleClick, nonetheless are “used by almost all top publishers to function as a kind of ’spigot’ for ad networks to access the inventory that publishers do not sell directly,” the group said. The merger will “eliminate nascent competition” between Google and DoubleClick for ad- serving tools and integrated ad networks, said BEUC. Web publishers likely would see lower revenue from ads served by Google, which could block non-Google ad networks from “interoperating” with publisher tools from DoubleClick, now seen as an “honest broker,” BEUC said. Consumers may see less content and less innovation online if Google raises rates for advertisers, who then pull back their advertising, hurting publishers downstream, it said. The so-called privacy race between search providers, which have all instituted data retention limits in recent months, may slow to a crawl, as “Google will lose any incentive” to tighten its privacy policies as its market dominance expands. Privacy is especially important to European audiences, BEUC said. The group also warned that Google could discriminate against customers based on price or other “commercial conditions,” if advertisers have access to consumer profiles held by Google that show, for example, a consumer is an “impulse buyer.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a general notice announcing that the 2008 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 February 15, 2008.
The U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel has issued a Textile Development Memo on the House of Representatives' passage of H.R. 3890, the Block Burmese JADE (Junta's Anti-Democratic Efforts) Act of 2007 on December 11, 2007. H.R. 3890 would impose import sanctions on certain Burmese gemstones, revoke the termination of Generalized System of Preferences duty-free benefits for certain Indian and Thai gold jewelry, etc. See future issue of ITT for additional details on H.R. 3890.(USA-ITA TDM dated 12/12/07, www.usaita.com.)
The Court of International Trade remanded Sherri N. Boynton v. U.S. to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to review and determine an appropriate penalty based on the Court's findings as to the charges against Boynton that it had determined to be violations of Customs rules and regulations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI administrative message announcing recent changes to the 2007 Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HS Update No. 0708), which include the following:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a fact sheet entitled, "Securing America's Borders, CBP 2007 Fiscal Year in Review," which provides details on the progress CBP made securing U.S. borders in FY 2007 and the challenges it faced. The following are highlights from the fact sheet:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted to its Web site the October 2007 customs broker license exam and answer key.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted to its Web site a notice providing details on the Automated Commercial Environment account type for sureties1 that was created with the deployment Entry Summary, Accounts, and Revenue (ESAR) A1.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of November 19, 2007. 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. (CBP's weekly TRQ/TPL commodity report, dated 11/19/07, available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/import/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/)