Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 1-5 in case they were missed.
The African Continental Free Trade Area officially went into "operational phase" on July 7 after an African Union summit meeting in Niamey, Niger, the African Union said in a July 7 news release. "The AfCFTA will be governed by five operational instruments, i.e. the Rules of Origin; the online negotiating forum; the monitoring and elimination of non-tariff barriers; a digital payments system and the African Trade Observatory," the AU said. Actual trading with reduced tariffs among the 54 member states under the AfCFTA isn't expected to begin until July 2020.
China’s National Medical Products Administration issued guidelines for the imports of reference products of biomedicines for clinical trials, according to a July 5 report from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Among the key points in the guidelines, China is urging applicants to import “original drugs already approved by China for general import” when they conduct “equivalence tests on their proposed biosimilar products.” In addition, if the location where the imported drug was produced differs “from that of the drug previously approved for import,” the applicant is required to “demonstrate the consistency of the drug across its various production bases or conduct research to establish such consistency,” the report said. In either case, the applicant must submit a “supplemental application” to the NMPA’s Center for Drug Evaluation. Drugs that are sourced from an “unapproved location” will not be allowed as part of a clinical trial until the center “has duly accredited it,” the report said.
In the July 5 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Exporters that produce and send goods from Puerto Rico to China may be able to avoid some of the tariffs on U.S. goods by using the U.S. territory as the origin, said Susie Hoeger, director of Global Trade Compliance and Policy at Abbott Laboratories. Hoeger mentioned the tip while speaking at the American Association of Exporters and Importers Annual Conference in Washington on June 27. "Chinese Customs has chosen to treat Puerto Rico differently than the U.S.," she said. "So if you don't know this and make things in Puerto Rico, declaring that as Puerto Rico origin instead of U.S., which is all the same for us, the tariffs don't hit. They've chosen to carve that out for some reason." Census Bureau statistics seem to show a recent uptick in exports to China from Puerto Rico. According to Census, the value of goods exported from the territory to China increased by 53.6 percent from 2017 to 2018.
Mexico’s Secretariat of Economy will stop issuing certificates of origin for exports under free trade agreements with the European Union, the European Free Trade Association and Japan, and exporters must instead obtain authorized exporter status to obtain benefits under the agreements, according to a circular from the Mexican Confederation of Customs Broker Associations. Exporters with existing authorizations on the Registry of Eligible Products for Tariff Preferences for Obtaining Certificates of Origin under the agreements will be given an authorized exporter number. Exporters that want to export more types of goods must file new requests in the registry and certify compliance with origin requirements in the Mexican single window, said the circular, which was posted by Mexican consultancy AJR Comercio Exterior. The new scheme will not apply for merchandise subject to some export quotas and some goods listed in an annex to the Mexico-Japan FTA.
The State Department is maintaining a foreign terrorist organization designation on Jundallah, an Iran-based militant organization, according to a notice scheduled to be published July 2 in the Federal Register. The State Department said the circumstances that warranted Jundallah’s original sanctions “have not changed in such a manner as to warrant revocation of the designation.” The State Department is scheduled to publish another notice that lists several new aliases for Jundallah, also known as People’s Resistance Movement of Iran (PMRI), including the Army of God and the Baloch Peoples Resistance Movement.
The Commerce Department will approve more temporary licenses to U.S. exporters selling “general merchandise” to Huawei, U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said on CBS and Fox News on June 30, potentially providing relief to both U.S. firms and China’s telecommunications tech giant. Although specific details have not yet been released, Commerce plans to grant export licenses for products that China can easily get from other countries, including “various chips and software,” Kudlow said.
In the June 28 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The European Union and Mercosur on June 28 agreed to a trade deal that will eliminate most tariffs on trade between the two blocs, the European Commission said in a press release. “The agreement concluded today will cover a population of 780 million and cement the close political and economic relations between the EU and Mercosur countries,” the press release said.