The Agricultural Marketing Service is lowering its fees for rice inspection services, it said in a notice. The final rule decreases fees across the board by 20 percent for fiscal year 2020, and by another 20 percent for FY21. Export port services will fall to $0.059 per hundredweight in the first year, and to $0.047 in the second, which begins Oct. 1, 2020. The new fees are applicable as of Jan. 1, 2020.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is removing the opioid antagonist 6-beta-naltrexol from schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act, it said in a final rule. Effective Jan. 24, DEA is removing “regulatory controls and administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable to controlled substances, including those specific to schedule II controlled substances, on persons who handle (manufacture, distribute, reverse distribute, dispense, conduct research, import, export, or conduct chemical analysis) or propose to handle” 6-beta-naltrexol, it said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration permanently placed the synthetic cannabinoids 5F-ADB, 5F-AMB, 5FAPINACA, ADB-FUBINACA, MDMB-CHMICA and MDMB-FUBINACA into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, in a final rule. The substances had already been temporarily listed in Schedule I since 2017 (see 1904050027). The final order takes effect Jan. 24.
The Drug Enforcement Administration placed the neurosteroid brexanolone into Schedule IV of the Controlled Substances Act, it said. The final rule confirms an interim regulation issued in June that subjected brexanolone to new registration, labeling, recordkeeping, and import and export requirements.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is issuing a final rule amending its regulations on its Market Access Program to eliminate the five-year limit on participation by branded products. Other updates in the final rule will bring the operation of the export promotion program “into conformance with the requirements in the Uniform Guidance,” USDA said. “Additional changes, such as the flexibility to announce program funding opportunities on the Grants.gov portal and edits to bring more consistency between the Market Access Program (MAP) and the Foreign Market Development (FMD) program, are desirable to bring the administration of the program into line with current best practices in Federal grant-making.” The final rule takes effect Jan. 13.
CBP plans to begin registration for the 2020 Trade Symposium on Jan. 9, it said in a tweet. The symposium is scheduled for March 10-11 in Anaheim, California. “The agenda, venue details, and registration link are coming soon,” it said.
Starting Jan. 1, “'X - No Unit Required' is not an acceptable Unit of Measure in the Automated Export System for most commodity classification codes,” the Census Bureau said in a Dec. 31 email. “There will be no grace period for this change.,” it said. The agency said in the email that “the Schedule B, Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS), and HTS Codes That Are Not Valid for AES tables have been updated to accept the changes to the January 1, 2020 codes.”
The Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General each released a report on Dec. 17 that noted various issues within CBP's drawback program. The GAO's report suggested that CBP work to flag excessive export submissions and “establish a reliable system of record for proof of export,” among other things. The DHS IG report found that CBP “lacked appropriate documentation retention periods to ensure importers and claimants maintained support for drawback transactions” and didn't scrutinize prior drawback claims enough for claimants during 2011 to 2018.
Automated Export System and Electronic Export Information filings are not yet considered proof of exportation for drawback purposes, according to a Dec. 9 alert from the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America. NCBFAA said it received the “advice” from CBP after “many inquiries and some confusion” about proof of export rules.
The Commerce Department is seeking comments on proposed revisions relating to the Automated Export System, the Census Bureau said in a notice. The revisions include provisions for the “early release of preliminary steel mill import statistics” and plans by both Census and the Bureau of Industry and Security to draft a notice of proposed rulemaking to clarify the responsibilities of parties in routed and standard export transactions (see 1907100053). Census said it is “working with BIS to receive concurrence in order to publish the NPRM." Census also said the two agencies aim to publish the NPRMs “around the same time” to “allow the trade community an opportunity to review the proposed requirements as they relate to both filing and licensing responsibilities.” Census said its draft rule “has received concurrence” from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Comments are due by Feb. 7, 2020.