A U.S. manufacturer seeks the imposition of new antidumping duties on walk-behind lawn mowers from China and Vietnam, as well as countervailing duties on walk-behind lawn mowers from China, it said in petitions filed with the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission May 26. Commerce will now decide whether to begin AD/CVD investigations, which could result in the imposition of permanent AD/CV duty orders and the assessment of AD and CV duties on importers.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is removing two previously approved exclusions from the fourth list of Section 301 tariffs on goods from China, it said in a notice. The deletions “correct technical errors in previously announced exclusions,” it said. The agency is deleting exclusions for “Tumblers or disposable graduated liners for pitchers, of plastics, of a kind used in healthcare facilities (described in statistical reporting number 3924.10.4000)” and “Manually operated pill or tablet crushers of plastics, presented with attachable pouches of plastics for capturing and storing the resulting powders (described in statistical reporting number 8479.82.0080),” it said. The action is effective for “goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption” as of Sept. 1, 2019.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground,” in a statement May 27 to Congress that Hong Kong no longer warrants the same treatment under U.S. laws as it did before the handover to China in 1997.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is creating a new online portal for comments on the Section 301 retaliatory tariffs imposed on products of the European Union in connection with the World Trade Organization dispute on Airbus subsidies, it said in a notice. USTR is required to revise the tariffs every 180 days “unless certain conditions are met,” and received nearly 26,000 comments prior to its last round of revisions. USTR’s notice seeks emergency clearance from the Office of Management and Budget to create the portal. The next round of revisions is due Aug. 12, and USTR anticipates that it would begin accepting comments via the new portal on June 23, it said.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated on May 22. The following headquarters rulings were modified recently, according to CBP:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for May 18-22 in case they were missed.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued some new product exclusions from Section 301 tariffs on the third list of products from China, according to a pre-publication copy of a notice posted to the agency’s website May 21 (see 2005220014). The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the tariffs on the third list took effect, and will remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020. New Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. subheading 9903.88.48 will be used for these products.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued another group of product exclusions from the third group of Section 301 tariffs on goods from China. The new exclusions from the tariffs include "seventeen 10-digit HTSUS subheadings, which respond to 33 separate exclusion requests, and 61 specially prepared product descriptions, which respond to 70 separate exclusion requests," according to the notice. The product exclusions apply retroactively to Sept. 24, 2018, the date the third set of tariffs took effect. The exclusions will remain in effect until Aug. 7, 2020.
The United States Council for International Business, in comments submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, is arguing that nearly 100 tariff lines should be spared Section 301 tariffs because those imports help to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tariffs include ventilator, anesthesia, X-ray, patient monitoring, ultrasound, MRI and computer tomography systems and electrical parts used in all of those systems. But they also include general IT equipment, such as computers, monitors, printers, scanners, 3D printers and computer accessories.
Even as UPS officials warned traders that the date of entry into force for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will not be postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic responses, they said all the details needed to comply won't be ready by July 1. Penny Naas, senior vice president for international public affairs at UPS, said it's not just the auto rules of origin that are “going to be provisional” in USMCA. She said that government officials will still be working on some other areas after it goes into effect. The global shipping company is in close contact with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.