Guatemalan customs authorities will now allow multiple corrections to Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) certificates of origin, reversing a previous policy that only allowed COOs to be corrected once for imports from the U.S., the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service said in a May 16 report. Implemented beginning April 26, the new policy “will help expedite the clearance of imported U.S. products, saving importers tens of thousands of dollars and make the import process more transparent,” the report said. Under the new policy, the COO can be corrected multiple times within 15 calendar days of written notification, which will also be provided by Guatemalan customs under the new policy.

Recent editions of Mexico's Diario Oficial list trade-related notices as follows:

The "annual interest rate for the third quarter of 2019 (July 1st 2019 to 30 September 2019) will be 1.6661," the Canada Border Services Agency said in a May 15 email. That rate affects "all importers and brokers who submit their B3s and AO notification of release queries using the CCS/CADEX system," the agency said.

Recent editions of Mexico's Diario Oficial list trade-related notices as follows:

The Canada Border Services Agency is taking a closer look at surtaxes collected on "other US goods" as part of Canada's retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., KPMG said in a report. The agency has "come to the conclusion that the volume of imports of these products against the amount of surtax collected does not balance. So the CBSA [has] started to audit importers of all goods subject to surtaxes." There are more than 100 such audits underway in the Toronto area and "many more across Canada," KPMG said.

The Canada Border Services Agency updated a memorandum to include information on the CBSA's expanded role in "enforcing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s aquatic animal health and plant health requirements that overlap with the Agency’s role respecting the Aquatic Invasive Species Regulations," the CBSA said May 13.

Argentina increased the value-added tax rate on certain imports, from 10 percent to 20 percent, according to a notice from Argentina’s tax authority and a May 10 report from KPMG. The change, which took effect April 17, will apply to taxpayers that cannot show that they are exempt from VATs or “in situations when the imported goods are regarded by the importer as fixed assets for accounting purposes,” KPMG said. KPMG said the change may cause some importers to “experience a substantial increase of VAT credit balances -- and these may be difficult to offset against output VAT.”

The government of Canada recently issued the following trade-related notices as of May 10 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):

The Canada Border Services Agency provided details in a May 10 Customs Notice on filing requirements for goods that are subject to the final safeguard tariffs on steel products (see 1904300218). The safeguards on heavy plate and stainless steel wire don't apply to goods from multiple countries, including the U.S., Korea, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Israel. Canada also released a notice to importers on the tariff rate quotas.

The Canada Border Services Agency should review the Courier Low Value Shipment Program "to improve the validation and collection" of sales taxes, the Auditor General of Canada said in a recently released report. The report focused on the growth of e-commerce from 2014 through February of 2019. "We found that existing legislation, combined with the Canada Border Services Agency’s poor data management of low-value shipments imported into Canada by courier companies, placed Canadian businesses at an unfair disadvantage in relation to foreign vendors," the Auditor General said. "According to the Department of Finance Canada, the situation could have encouraged domestic vendors to move their operations abroad and could have discouraged foreign investment in Canada."