The Court of International Trade ruled Dec. 4 that a medical food company's imports would be classified as food, not as pharmaceutical products.
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.
German company KingKong-Tools GmbH & Co KG, along with its American subsidiary King Kong Tools, will pay $1.9 million to resolve allegations of customs fraud, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced. The office alleged that King Kong falsely said its tool imports were made in Germany when they were made in China, misrepresenting their country of origin in violation of the False Claims Act.
A bipartisan, bicameral bill would allow cashmere products made in Mongolia duty-free access to the U.S., as a way of strengthening Mongolia's democracy, its sponsors say.
Changes to an entry date due to CBP modifications of an entry summary don't affect the time of entry for the purposes of assessing Section 301 tariffs, CBP said in a ruling released by the agency Nov. 28.
China is the country of origin for Lexmark printers imported from Mexico for both Section 301 trade duties and country of origin marking, CBP said in a recently released ruling. CBP found that the printer transports incorporated into the printer, which were made in China, were critical for the printer to feed the paper and to print copies, and were the component that imparted essential character, rather than the printed circuit board assemblies, which were assembled in Mexico.
President Donald Trump didn't clearly misconstrue the statute when he revoked a Section 201 tariff exclusion on bifacial solar panels, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Nov. 13. Granting the president wider discretion to make modifications to Section 201 duties, Judges Alan Lourie, Richard Taranto and Leonard Stark said that the statute -- Section 2254(b)(1)(B) of the Trade Act of 1930 -- allows for trade-restricting modifications, as opposed to only trade-liberalizing ones.
A recently introduced Senate bill that would impose an import pollution fee likely violates World Trade Organization rules, Simon Lester, former legal affairs officer at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat, said in a blog post.
Under a newly introduced bill imposing a pollution fee, importers of record would have to pay a tax based on the percentage of the value of the imported good and calculated on the difference between the pollution intensity of that good's production in the country it's manufactured in and domestic production.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who traveled to China with the Senate majority leader and other senators in mid-October, said what he saw there reinforced his desire to pass what he calls a "foreign pollution fee," a tariff on imports that are more carbon intensive than domestic production. He told International Trade Today that he'll introduce the bill "we think later this month, or maybe early next month."
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