Miscellaneous

QUESTION: Are there members whose companies have Trade broken into 2 teams – Trade Operations (handling transactional work, documentation, declarations, day-to-day activities) and Trade Compliance (determining HTS, handling valuation issues, auditing, communicating regulatory changes)? If so, what is the reporting structure?  I am trying to determine if we should set up this type of structure […]

QUESTION: One of our ocean carriers is advising that effective in June, all booking instructions include HS codes for all cargo types and destinations.  If I recall, the inclusion of HS codes on cargo manifests came up in the past but couldn’t be implemented due to a number of operational and shipper challenges. Does anyone […]

QUESTION: WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF  A SHIPMENT COMES FROM TAIWAN AND ONE OF THE TARIFF IS ON THE 301 LIST, IT SHOULD NOT APPLY AND WE DO NOT HAVE TO PAY THE HIGH DUTY RATE, CORRECT? IS TAIWAN CONSIDERED PART OF CHINA?  It calls Republic of China ************* Answers: For U.S. government purposes Taiwan […]

QUESTION: U.S. regulations state that we may not export to, or compensate, an individual that is on the restricted party lists.  Screening is the mechanism to ensure compliance. How frequently do companies rescreen their employees against restricted party lists? Could you share how do you ensure compliance with the above without periodic rescreening of employees? […]

QUESTION: Would any of the members be willing to share some of the language that they use in contracts with material suppliers that provides coverage regarding expectations for Customs Compliance/International Trade activities? ================== ANSWERS: I’d recommend looking online.  In particular search for “international purchase order” and “international supplier agreement.”  Many companies post these documents online […]

QUESTION: We shipped a full container of machinery spare parts with an incorrect Commercial Invoice and Packing list that did not acknowledge the inclusion of one Crate of Parts that were in the container.  The container cleared customs and the crate of product worth about $20,000 was discovered by our Dealer.  The clerical error on […]

QUESTION: We have a US customer, that we make a sale to domestically. The product comes from overseas and we ship it directly to our customer (from our manufacturer), they are the importer of record (the US customer).   From my standpoint, this is a domestic transaction. We have been doing all the paperwork, indicating […]

QUESTION: With regards to MID Code construction, CBP requires “the ISO code for the actual country of origin of the goods” as the first two characters.  However, our vendor invoices note a different country (e.g. CoO CN and Commercial Invoice address Taipai Taiwan) such that our broker is using TW as the first two characters. […]

QUESTION: Is using the Consolidated Screening List on export.gov sufficient for showing due diligence for all of the sanctions and denied parties checks?  Are there any sanctions or other lists that should be screened that are not on the CSL? ********* Answers: If you are a small entity with no overseas business it MAY be […]

QUESTION: I’ve been asked to “weaponize trade compliance” at my new job. I think that the best way for me to do this is to show how trade compliance can actually make a company more efficient and give it a competitive advantage. Can anyone suggest any resources (white papers, etc) on how best to present […]

QUESTION: We are an importer of record and purchase from a related party overseas. We have received a retroactive price contract from one of our customers. The invoice value we used at time of entry is the pricing we had on file. Now we have the new pricing on file and it is retroactive. We […]