Customs Law

I watch competitive cooking the way a stereotypical American male might watch baseball. I don't care if it is Top Chef or Chopped at the high end or the dreck that is Cupcake Wars and The Great American Food Truck Race. I don't watch kids compete, that's where I draw the line. I also like to eat. As a result, I am familiar with a lot of strange food items. Pine nuts are not all that odd. I recently learned a lot more about pine nuts when I read Specialty Commodities Inc. v. United States , which involves the tariff classification of the seed of the Korean pine nut, Pinus koraiensis. Customs and Border Protection classified these seeds as "Other nuts, fresh or dried, whether or not shelled or peeled: Other: Other: Shelled: Other" in HTSUS item 0802.90.97. The plaintiff believes they are best classified in 0802.90.25 as "Pignolia: Shelled." Clearly, the question is whether the seed of the Koreas pine, from China, is a "Pignolia" for purpose...

The NAFTA Marking rules are a giant mystery to many people. Let's assume you are importing evaporator cores from Mexico. The cores are initially produced in South Korea and shipped to the U.S. From here, they are exported to a facility in Mexico that adds fittings and connections before shipping them back to the U.S. Once back here, they are used in the assembly of automotive air conditioners. When returned to the U.S., the cores are not NAFTA originating. You can assume that set of fact because it is what happened in CBP Ruling N014917 (Aug. 2, 2007). So, how do you analyze the origin of the cores? The U.S. has various rules used to determine country of origin. Most products that are not wholly the growth or product of a single country are deemed to originate in the last country in which it was subject to a substantial transformation, i.e. , a change in name, character, or use. See 19 CFR 134.1(b). That section goes on to say " however, for a good of a NAFTA country, ...

This one is pretty straight forward. The only reason I am covering it is that the notion of importing completely prepared pizza from Germany is oddly funny to me. Kind of like getting tacos from Australia. In N261593 (Mar. 11, 2015), U.S. Customs and Border Protection answered a ruling request from Freiberger U.S.A., Inc. asking for the tariff classification of a completely prepared and frozen pizza to be imported from Germany. Four varieties were involved including: flatbread with cream sauce and eleven-inch square. The correct tariff classification is in Heading 1905 which is the heading for: Bread, pastry, cakes, biscuits and other bakers' wares, whether or not containing cocoa; communion wafers, empty capsules of a kind suitable for pharmaceutical use, sealing wafers, rice paper and similar products . . . . I come from Chicago where we like our pizza thick, the way God intended it. Consequently, it makes sense to me that pizza would be treated as a bread product. Sp...

Those who are responsible for NAFTA compliance are very familiar with the NAFTA Certificate of Origin and the Preference Criteria to be recorded in Field 7.  The criteria are used to indicate to the importer as well as to the customs authorities in the country of importation exactly how the goods qualify as originating. Under the NAFTA, there are six possible preference criteria with preference criterion B being the most common. When Customs sees a B in Field 7, it knows that the finished good contains non-originating material and that the good qualifies as originating because the non-originating materials made a qualifying change in tariff classification as a result of production in North America and, if applicable, the finished good satisfies the Regional Value Content requirement. That is all simple enough under NAFTA. But, under the subsequent free trade agreements, no one ever specified a coding system for the preference criteria. As far as I am concerned, the lack of a unif...

Customs and Border Protection has posted the instructions for making claims under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. Thad document is here . The crazy thing, which I mentioned in an earlier post , is that the rules of origin are based on the 2002 Tariff Schedule and have not been updated for the 2007 or 2012 revisions. As a result, CBP is instructing importers and certifiers to analyze their products under the 2002 rules and to indicate both the 2002 and 2012 tariff classifications.

To cut to the case, the President signed the Korea-FTA legislation last. As a result, the MPF changes in that bill will control. That means that Merchandise Processing Fee will increase to .3464% retroactively to October 1, so expect a bill from Customs and Border Protection. For now, the system will not accept payments at the higher rate. Customs is expected to provide about a week's notice before the program is done to implement the increase. Note that the change in rate does not affect the $25 minimum or the $485 maximum. Thus, large commercial shippers, who are likely to have the cap apply to most shipments, will see no real change in their total landed cost. On the other hand, small shippers will likely absorb the increase in MPF collected. That seems like something else to anger the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Panama and Colombia, too. Here is an article from the Atlantic about the deals, focusing on Korea. I feel as if I should have something insightful to say and that I should take a position on the economic impact these deals will have on the U.S. as a whole, on jobs in particular, and possibly on compliance professionals. The truth is, I am somewhat numb to trade deals. Far and away, the trade agreement that gets the most commercial traction is the NAFTA. We are 17 years into NAFTA and every day (really, every day) I answer questions about how to do the documentation. That is because the rules are very complex. I am happy for the opportunity to help and I truly understand the complexities of the data gathering necessary for compliance. But I also know that adding additional trade deals adds exponentially to the compliance difficulties. For this, I blame the WTO's inability to get a comprehensive trade deal done during the Uruguay Round. As it is, the NAFTA was used as a model ...