Watch and clock importers are required to include origin information about the components when subject to the Section 301 tariffs on goods from China, CBP said in an Nov. 8 CSMS message. "In circumstances where the band or case component in watches or clocks are made in China, if the band or case component(s) are not substantially transformed and are subject to Section 301 duties, then all of the components need to be constructively separated into their component parts and each component separately valued and reported on separate entry summary lines," CBP said.

Tech companies and trade associations favor working more closely with U.S. trade partners to diversify information and communications technology (ICT) supply chains and make them more resilient to disruption and bottlenecks, several commented Nov. 4 in BIS-2021-0021. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security sought comment to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on supply chain disruptions in the “critical sectors and subsectors” of the ICT “industrial base” by the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order (see 2109170029).

A bill that would flip the burden of proof on forced labor to say that goods either made in Xinjiang or made by a company that accepts workers transferred from Xinjiang are made with forced labor unless proven otherwise has been attached to the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. That means the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is more likely to pass the Senate before the end of the year.

The Court of International Trade erred when it took "bypass" liquidations into its consideration of treatment previously afforded importer Kent International's children's bicycle seats, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a Nov. 3 opinion. Remanding the issue to the trade court, a three-judge panel at the Federal Circuit, however, upheld CIT's determination that there was no de facto "established and uniform practice" (EUP) regarding the customs classification of kids' bike seats.

Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.

The office of Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., started sharing a discussion draft of the Customs Modernization Act with the goal of avoiding unintended consequences for businesses that provide services to importers or that import. It's a bill that would strengthen CBP's hand in numerous areas. "We were working with CBP on the legislation and, then, this is now sending it to industry experts," Cassidy spokesperson Ty Bofferding said. That input will help shape the final bill, he said, and described this as the middle of the process. He could not predict whether a bill would be introduced in 2022.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from Oct. 25-29 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Most Senate Judiciary Committee members from both parties said that two bills aimed at fighting the sale of counterfeits on e-commerce platforms are needed, though neither would be a silver bullet for a growing problem. The CEO of the Internet Association, one of the witnesses at the Nov. 2 hearing, also said his companies could support the INFORM Consumers Act, if it was more like the reworked version in the House, and they think the threshold for being considered a "high-volume seller" needs to be higher (see 2110280061).

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that the administration is "very supportive" of Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0, a bipartisan bill from Ohio's senators that would clarify how dumping calculations are made, would provide for expedited successive investigations when there is an import surge from a new country on a product subject to a trade remedy order, and would address extraterritorial subsidies (see 2104160037)

The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America remains supportive of CBP's efforts to impose new continuing education requirements for customs brokers (see 2109090030), but requested some changes from the proposed rule in recently submitted comments. The NCBFAA would like to see CBP include provisions for recognizing 30-minute trainings as the smallest unit of continuing education training credits (half credits) and for full credits to include time to allow for breaks. It also said it agreed with CBP's change to 36 hours of education every three years, from 40 hours.