On February 28, 2012, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Detroit seized a shipment of Chinese-made toys with high lead paint levels at a Centralized Examination Station (CES). Seventeen boxes of toys valued at $3,744 destined for Flint, Michigan were selected for review by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and examined by CBP.
A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the International Trade Administration posted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Web site as of March 12, 2012, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. These messages are available by searching on the listed CBP message number at http://addcvd.cbp.gov.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a document on the trade benefits from the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). ACE is the commercial trade processing system being developed to become the "single window" through which international traders will electronically provide all information needed by federal agencies for the import of cargo. CBP states that the benefits of ACE continue to grow as new capabilities are developed and deployed. The document lists the trade benefits based on functionality currently available in ACE and are organized by trade sector in addition to, in some cases, ACE Portal role.
As the Spring travel season approaches, U.S. Customs and Border Protection would like to remind importers and the traveling public that Kinder Eggs, a popular product during the Easter holiday season, is banned from import into the U.S. Kinder Eggs are hollow milk chocolate eggs about the size of a large hen’s egg. They are a prohibited item because they contain a toy, hidden inside, that has small parts and poses a choking and aspiration hazard for children younger than three years of age. Kinder Eggs may not be imported into the U.S. and will be confiscated and destroyed. The traveler, in possession of the Kinder Eggs, may be allowed to take them back to Canada.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that its maintenance activities for ACE that were started on Saturday March 10, 2012 2300 EST are now complete and ACE is now available. On March 9, CBP advised the trade that the regular ACE Maintenance Window might be extended Sunday, March 11 and that the extended window was scheduled from 5:00 am EDT - 6:45 pm EDT. (CSMS #12-000077, dated 03/11/12)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection for Field Operations at the Port of New York/Newark has issued an Informational Pipeline notifying the trade community that palletizing containerized rice shipments at the time of export to the U.S. will help expedite any CBP Agriculture Inspections at the Port of New York/Newark for Khapra Beetle.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection for Field Operations at the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport has issued a Public Bulletin announcing that it will hold a trade forum on antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) on March 27, 2012. The purpose of this trade forum is to provide the importing community with an overview of AD/CVD and to provide guidance on the requirements for declaring AD/CVD at time of entry/entry summary. The program will not cover such topics as how to determine if a product is subject to AD/CVD, bond requirements, non-reimbursement statements, scope rulings, and issues surrounding AD/CVD cases.