Customs brokers don't need to receive duties directly from an importer and can receive funds from a middleman, CBP said in a ruling issued Aug. 25 and released by the agency Sept. 6 (HQ H318461). The decision followed a request from World Customs Brokerage (WCB) for a binding ruling regarding broker relations with unlicensed persons. Both WCB and freight forwarder World Courier, Inc. (WCI) are subsidiaries of AmerisourceBergen Corporation, and WCI often forwards imports to WCB for customs brokerage services and bills and receives payment through WCI.
Ben Perkins
Ben Perkins, Assistant Editor, is a reporter with International Trade Today and its sister publications, Trade Law Daily and Export Compliance Daily, where he covers sanctions, court rulings, and other international trade issues. He previously worked as a trade analyst for a Washington D.C. advisory firm. Ben holds a B.A. in English from the University of New Hampshire and an M.A. in International Relations from American University. Ben joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2022.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Sept. 5 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
Specialty medical foods designed for infants and toddlers should be classified as medicaments and also enter duty-free under special Chapter 98 tariff provisions for articles for the handicapped, Nutricia North America said in an Aug. 31 motion at the Court of International Trade. Nutricia has asked the court to order CBP to classify the products under Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S. subheading 3004.50.5040, with a secondary classification under HTSUS subheading 9817.00.96, to reliquidate the subject entries, and to issue refunds plus interest to Nutricia (Nutricia North America v. U.S., CIT #16-00008).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
In the Aug. 31 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 56, No. 34), CBP published a proposal to revoke a ruling on Bill-Stacker Subassemblies
The International Trade Commission’s finding that imports of methionine from Spain and Japan had a significant impact on the domestic industry and contributed to its declining performance was reasonable and correct, the government said in an Aug. 29 motion at the Court of International Trade (Adisseo Espana v. U.S., CIT #21-00562). The motion came in response to an Aug. 12 motion by Spanish exporter Adisseo, which argued that the commission overvalued the importance of price in its determination of injury in the antidumping duty investigation (see 2208150017).
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
Amazon's Echo Show smart displays are properly classified as "machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data" under subheading 8517.62.00, rather than as speakers of heading 8518, CBP said in a recently released ruling. In HQ H316742, dated June 3 and released Aug. 30, CBP found heading 8517 better described the principal function of the multifunction Alexa devices.
Three separate lawsuits at the Court of International Trade are challenging the results of the Commerce Department's eighth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China. All three suits allege Commerce made errors in its calculations and choice of data, particularly its surrogate values, during the review.
A company formerly operating a bonded warehouse facility owes the government additional duties on 2,188 pairs of shoes that remained unaccounted for when the facility was shut down, ruled CBP headquarters in ruling H289595, released Aug. 26. CBP said the shoes, along with many other items, were improperly classified and stored by Jay Group in its facility before being withdrawn during the warehouse's closure. CBP ruled that Jay Group failed to rebut the presumption of correctness of its classification of shoes that remained unaccounted for in Jay Group’s final withdrawal, and instead accused CBP of factual errors.