A bipartisan group of senators signed a Feb. 14 letter urging the Biden administration to take action against a surge of Mexican steel imports. The letter said tariffs can be reintroduced under a 2019 agreement that removed Section 232 duties on Mexican steel imports but allows them to be reintroduced if Mexican steel imports "exceed historic volumes of trade" and "surge meaningfully" into the market. The lawmakers said iron and steel imports increased about 73% over the agreed baseline from 2015 to 2017, which they believe requires action from the administration under the agreement.
Customs duty
A customs duty is a tariff or tax which a country imposes on goods when they are transported across international borders. Customs Duties are used to protect countries' economies, residents, jobs, and environments, by limiting the flow of imported merchandise, especially restricted and prohibited goods, into the country. The Customs duty rate is a percentage determined by the value of the article purchased in the foreign country and not based on quality, size, or weight. U.S. customs duties are listed in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
The U.S. settled a civil suit against global trading and investment firm Samsung C&T America -- a subsidiary of Korean conglomerate Samsung C&T Corp. -- over charges SCTA violated the False Claims Act by misclassifying footwear imports to avoid paying customs duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced. The importer will pay $1 million to the U.S. and make admissions over its conduct, specifically that it misclassified its imports on entry documents filed with CBP and underpaid custom duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
President Donald Trump legally expanded the Section 232 national security tariffs to include steel and aluminum "derivative" products despite implementing the expansion beyond procedural deadlines laid out in the statute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a Feb. 7 opinion. Relying on the appellate court's opinion in Transpacific Steel v. U.S., in which the court said that the president can adjust the tariffs beyond these time limits if it relates to the original plan of action laid out in the initial Section 232 tariff action, the Federal Circuit said that the expansion of the tariffs was related to the original plan.
The Court of International Trade held oral arguments on Feb. 7 in the massive litigation over the lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs. During the nearly two-hour affair, Judges Mark Barnett, Claire Kelly and Jennifer Choe-Groves probed the parties' positions on whether the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative complied with the Administrative Procedure Act by properly considering comments made on the proposed tariffs when imposing the duties on $500 billion of Chinese goods (In Re Section 301 Cases, CIT # 21-00052).
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York opened and settled a case with vitamin and nutritional supplement importer International Vitamins Corp. (IVC) over the company's misclassification of its products to avoid paying customs duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Jan. 30. IVC will pay $22.87 million to the U.S. and admit to its conduct. The government joined its lawsuit with a whistleblower action filed under seal pursuant to the False Claims Act, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
A recent change to how customs brokers get duty-free certificates for entries under government military contracts will not affect submission of the certificates to CBP, the agency said in a CSMS message. The decommissioning of the Defense Contract Management Agency’s duty-free entry eTool system “has no impact on the submission of duty-free certificates for CBP purposes,” CBP said. Brokers will not have access to the new Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment (PIEE) that replaces eTool.
Hundreds of companies, as well as trade groups from agriculture, retailers and manufacturing, have told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that the Section 301 tariffs on $350 million in Chinese goods have not achieved their aim, have hurt U.S. businesses and, often, have not even moved production to other countries in Asia or to Mexico.
Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Bob Casey, D-Pa., are continuing to press Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to convince the president to hike tariffs on transformer inputs such as grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) laminations and cores. The two senators, who have a grain-oriented electrical steel producer in each of their states, published their letter on Jan. 13.
Senate Finance Committee member Bill Cassidy, R-La., wants the government to greatly expand its tariff liberalization, to cover many South American and Central American countries and to cover goods made in factories that moved from China to the Western Hemisphere.