U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued memoranda announcing the calendar year 2012 tariff preference levels (TPLs) for certain textiles and apparel from Canada or Mexico.
The Office of Textiles and Apparel has issued monthly reports containing official September 2011 trade data from the Census Bureau for U.S. imports and exports of textiles and apparel. (As complete August 2011 data is no longer available, highlights from OTEXA's report containing August 2011 trade data is summarized at the end of this notice.)
The Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation has announced Special Import Quota #114 for upland cotton that will be established on November 24, 2011, allowing importation of 14,594,057 kilograms (67,030 bales) of upland cotton. It will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than February 21, 2012, and entered into the U.S. not later than May 21, 2012. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally-adjusted average rate for the period May 2011 through July 2011, the most recent three months for which data are available.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced its weekly meeting on November 30, 2011 in which the staff briefs the Commission on various compliance matters. The meeting is closed to the public, and the agenda is confidential.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission published notice of the following voluntary recall for November 22, 2011:
The Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation has announced Special Import Quota #113 for upland cotton that was established on November 17, 2011, allowing importation of 14,594,057 kilograms (67,030 bales) of upland cotton. It will apply to upland cotton purchased not later than February 14, 2012, and entered into the U.S. not later than May 14, 2012. The quota is equivalent to one week's consumption of cotton by domestic mills at the seasonally-adjusted average rate for the period May 2011 through July 2011, the most recent three months for which data are available.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a notice announcing that it will increase the maximum civil penalty amounts authorized under the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA), the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA), and the Flammable Fabrics Act (FFA)1 to account for inflation. The new maximum civil penalty amounts will apply to violations that occur after January 1, 2012.
As press sources report on the increasing gridlock and partisan infighting at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Commissioners Nord and Adler have issued another round of supplemental statements on the recent vote to approve the final rule on continued testing of children's products (and other issues). The two Commissioners are debating each others' positions on whether the final rule should have been re-proposed as recommended by staff, whether the statute actually requires periodic testing of children's products to be done by a third-party lab, Congressional intent in their recent amendments to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, etc.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission published notice of the following voluntary recalls for November 16, 2011:
In August 2011, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a proposed rule to clarify and correct its 2010 final rule on durable infant or toddler product consumer registration form requirements.1 Comments from the trade indicate that they support the changes but suggest that CPSC allow more recognizable “brand names” to be used on the cards.