USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service is unlikely to extend once more the deadline for filing certificates in ACE on all entries of organic products, an official of the program said Aug. 29 during a webinar on the AMS’ national organic program, hosted by the Los Angeles Customs Brokers & Freight Forwarders Association.

The U.S. has asked Canada for formal consultations on the 3% digital services tax on revenues of large social media platforms, e-commerce platforms and other companies that target advertising or collect data from Canadian customers.

Higher or new Section 301 action on Chinese goods such as batteries, EVs, plug-in hybrids, ship-to-shore cranes, solar cells and panels, syringes, needles, critical minerals, some metals will not go up until at least September, as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has missed a second self-imposed deadline. The proposed changes, first announced in May, said some tariffs would go up on Aug. 1, but on July 30, the office said it had not finished responding to more than 1,100 comments, and it would make a final determination in August (see 2407300047).

Licensed customs brokers should expect to hear soon what the revised continuing education requirements will be to keep their customs broker licenses up to date.

The Federal Maritime Commission this week ordered German container shipper Hamburg Sud to pay $17.6 million to OJ Commerce, an American e-commerce business, adding millions of dollars to the penalty an administrative law judge imposed last year after Hamburg retaliated against OJC for threatening to file a complaint with the FMC. The commission also appeared to adopt a broader interpretation of carrier "refusal to deal" violations.

Sayari analysts, who say their company crunches 600 million shipment records, say that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act has had more impact than British, German, Swiss, Canadian and French laws aimed at removing human rights abuses from supply chains.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

CBP will grant Lorte Technologies, Inc.'s protest on the tariff classification of its pulse oximeters from China, according to a June 18 decision posted by CBP on Aug. 19. The agency ruled that, even though part of the pulse oximeters could fall under the classification for tachometers, considering the whole instrument would place the oximeters under a different classification category for medical instruments.

Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg, who serves on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, says his recent Foreign Affairs essay on addressing Chinese exporting ambitions is an effort to put forward a vision of what "we want the global economy to actually look like," something he says has been missing in the piecemeal efforts of Section 301 tariffs, EU trade defenses and anti-coercion instruments and other reactions to Chinese nonmarket overcapacity.

As uncertainties loom over when the work stoppage at two of Canada's major freight railways will be resolved, CBP officials told the trade community to keep communication lines open with receiving ports so that CBP staff at the port are able to handle any diverted cargo.