The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a notice announcing that, based on its current ongoing review proceedings, as well as additional rulemaking proceedings required by new legislation, it does not intend to announce review of any additional rules or guides during 2004.
CIT Rules in Favor of CBP's Classification of Frozen, Unbaked Danish. In Schulstad USA, Inc. v. U.S., the Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled in favor of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) finding that certain frozen, unbaked danish products were properly classified under HTS 1901.90.90 (6.4%) as other food preparations of flour, etc., not elsewhere specified or included.
The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS') Undersecretary testified before a House subcommittee that by January 5, 2004 U.S.-Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) was in operation at 115 airports and 14 seaports, covering 99% of all foreign visitors. While the Undersecretary stated that more than 600,000 foreign visitors have been processed under U.S.-VISIT without increasing wait times, the Journal of Commerce (JoC) reported that the implementation of the program at the 50 busiest land border crossings could slow down the flow of goods and people. US-VISIT is scheduled to be extended to these border crossings by December 31, 2004. (DHS Press Release 01/28/04, available via fax by emailing staff@brokerpower.com , JoC report www.joc.com)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a document entitled, Importation of Rough Diamonds which, among other things, explains what importers need to know about the Clean Diamond Trade Act and the Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC's) interim regulations implementing this Act, etc.
(a) preliminary de minimis rate
(a) Hang Lung continues to have a preliminary de minimis AD rate of 0.12%
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced that it is delaying the full enforcement of the term "shipper" for inbound ocean cargo declaration purposes, as it appears in CBP's December 5, 2003 final rule on the advance electronic presentation of cargo information.
The Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) has recently posted to the Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) Web site (http://otexa.ita.doc.gov/corr.htm) the 2004 Correlation: Textile and Apparel Categories with the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States.
The State Department has issued a final rule, effective February 17, 2004, which amends the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) by modifying the U.S.' denial policy regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) so that it is consistent with United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1493 of July 2003.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) Office of Information and Technology has posted a notice to its Web site containing (a) a list, updated as of February 12, 2004, of companies/persons offering Sea Automated Manifest System (AMS) data processing services to the trade community, and (b) the Sea AMS Respondent Checklist, as follows: