CBP Collected $74.4 Billion in Duties, Almost Half on Chinese Section 301 Products
More than 12.7 million counterfeit face masks were seized by CBP during fiscal year 2020, part of more than 950 seizures of either FDA-prohibited drugs or test kits, or counterfeit or fraudulent products aimed at fighting COVID-19, the agency said in its annual fiscal year report, released Feb. 4. About 51% came from China; 24% were discovered in the mail; and 53% were sent by express couriers. For general intellectual property seizures, 90% were in either international mail or express shipments.
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Overall, CBP had 8% fewer merchandise entries, with a large amount of the decline from April to June, when volumes fell almost 20% compared with the same quarter in 2019. Overall, CBP processed 32.8 million entries valued at $2.4 trillion. It collected about $74.4 billion in duties, a 3.5% increase over FY19. Almost half of those duties were on Section 301 goods from China, at $35.6 billion, which was up 19% from FY19. CBP also collected nearly $1.3 billion in Section 232 steel duties, more than $900 million in Section 201 duties, and $500 million in Section 232 aluminum duties. The agency also processed more than 100,000 steel and aluminum exclusion requests and reviewed about 1,700 draft Section 301 exclusions.
In FY20, $18.2 billion of imported goods were subject to AD/CVD. The agency assessed about $1.8 billion in AD/CVD deposits. Its entry summary reviews recovered more than $94.2 million in AD/CVD duties owed, across 11 cases. CBP’s audit services identified more than $203 million in AD/CVD discrepancies, with $7.2 million collected by the end of the fiscal year. One investigation identified more than $1.8 billion in duties owed.
There were 45 new AD/CVD orders during the fiscal year, and 540 in effect by the end of the year, a 7% increase from the previous year. More than 2,600 importers took advantage of duty deferral during March and April, and they were able to postpone paying more than $574 million in duties and fees. CBP said it prevented importers from evading $287 million in duties during the fiscal year, and initiated 64 Enforce and Protect Act investigations, with 30 final determinations of evasion during the year.