Customs Not in Contempt for Revoking is Approval for the "Duty-free" Sale of Fuels.In Ammex, Inc. v. U.S., the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed the Court of International Trade's (CIT's) denial of Ammex's motion to hold Customs in contempt because it revoked approval of the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel on a duty- and tax-free basis at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, MI and Windsor, Canada.

As required by the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (P.L. 107-228), the Census Bureau has been developing regulations to mandate filing through the Automated Export System (AES) of all exports that require Shipper's Export Declaration (SED) information.

According to Presidential Proclamation 7758, which was issued on March 1, 2004, as well as U.S. governmental sources, Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) duty free treatment will terminate for goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption, on or after May 1, 2004 from the following seven countries:

The Commerce Department's Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) has issued its January 2004 Textiles and Apparel Import Report, which includes statistics on general imports (both quota and non-quota) of cotton, wool, man-made fiber, silk blend, and non-cotton vegetable fiber textiles and apparel.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued an administrative message announcing that several changes will be made to ABI and FDA software, effective April 14, 2004, to improve the process for filing FDA Prior Notices of imported food (PNs), as follows:

The World Customs Organization (WCO) has issued an amending supplement (No. 4, dated August 2003) to the Harmonized System Explanatory Notes (ENs). (Although not binding on U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the ENs are followed by CBP whenever possible.) (This is Part III of a multi-part series of summaries on this amending supplement. See future issues of ITT for additional summaries.)

On March 22, 2004, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced additional security initiatives aimed at further reducing vulnerabilities to transit and rail systems. New initiatives to be undertaken will target three specific areas: threat response support capability, public awareness and participation, and future technological innovations.

According to articles in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Today, CBP's National Targeting Center (NTC), established on October 21, 2001, is the centralized coordination point for all of CBP's anti-terrorism efforts. The NTC provides target-specific information to field offices and is continuously operational. In January 2003, the NTC moved to a new facility in Northern Virginia.

On June 8, 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Bureau of Census (Census) plan to deliver a redesign of the commodity module of the Automated Export System (AES).