President Trump Issues Executive Order on Hong Kong Autonomy On Tuesday July 14th, President Trump issued an Executive Order regarding China’s actions in Hong Kong dealing with its new control of life in Hong Kong. The President has determined that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China and has suspended many of the provisions of the Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992. This includes new restrictions of U.S. exports to Hong Kong. One thing we do not see is language making Hong Kong’s goods subject to the China 301 duties. We will follow this closely. The executive order can be found here.
USTR Issues Special Modifications and 61 New Exclusions for List 4 On July 10th, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) issued a Federal Register Notice (FRN) that included 61 new exclusions for List 4 that are extended until September 1, 2020. The FRN also included modifications to exclusions that had classifications that were affected negatively by the update of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule that changed on July 1, 2020 along with changes for the USMCA. Several classifications changed their statistical numbers which removed them from qualifying for an existing 301 tariff exclusion. The FRN of July 10th included modifications to already existing exclusions which allow for corrections to entries made before July 1st, allowing them to still get the exclusion with the changed language after July 1st. A copy of the FRN with these changes can be found on the Federal Register site.
USTR Issues Additional Exclusion Modifications for List 3 The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has posted an additional notice on its website announcing additional technical modification of 17 exclusions that affect the language of existing exclusions. This advanced notice has not been issued as a Federal Register Notice (FRN) yet, and the changes will not be programmed for entries until after the FRN is published. The USTR’s notice can be found here.
PierPass to Increase Fees on August 1st For cargo picked up for imports or delivered for exports starting August 1st, the TMF will increase to $33.47 per twenty-foot container and to $66.94 for all other sizes of containers. The announcement of this change can be found on the PierPass website.