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/)
During the November 16, 2007 meeting of the Departmental Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Related Homeland Security Functions (COAC), members of COAC agreed on a letter which will be sent to CBP Commissioner Basham regarding CBP's Office of International Trade (OT) and its impact on trade one year after it was formed.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its new Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism minimum security criteria for air carriers. CBP has also posted its implementation plan for the new criteria.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has published a list of field offices whose ports accept the electronic CBP Form 214 (e214, Foreign Trade Zone Admission and/or Status Designation) in lieu of a paper copy.