A year after launching its first smart home product, Brilliant turned its sights on builders, CEO Aaron Emigh told us last week. At CEDIA, Brilliant bowed integration with Schlage and ButterflyMX, a smart intercom company, which says it’s being installed in more than a third of new U.S. multifamily developments. Emigh said homebuilders want a smart home product that’s “part of the home” vs. a counter-sitting appliance. People “don’t necessarily want to have to carry an iPad from room to room to control their home,” he said. The company last year failed to get its controllers removed from a tariff line on components it sources from China under Trade Act Section 301 duties that took effect Sept. 24. “I’m not any more fond of them than I was then,” Emigh said, saying that as a startup, “you expect to face adversity here and there; you don’t expect that adversity to come from your own government.” Brilliant's moving manufacturing out of China because “it’s so hard to read the tea leaves here and understand where it’s all going,” Emigh said. On whether he’s concerned the new location could also be subject to future tariffs, he said, “Absolutely, that is a huge concern. The strange thing is, there’s nowhere in the world that’s safe."

August sales at electronics and appliance stores declined 2.9 percent year over year and were unchanged sequentially from July, reported the National Retail Federation Friday. Retail sales across the board increased 4.1 percent in August from a year earlier and were up 0.4 percent from July, said NRF. Online and other non-store sales were up 14.3 percent year over year and up 1.6 percent month over month, it said. Consumer spending stayed “resilient” in August though sales grew “somewhat slower” than in July, “which could reflect consumers’ concerns about the unpredictability of trade policy,” it said. It’s “too early to assess the impact” of the 15 percent List 4A Section 301 tariffs that took effect Sept. 1, “but they do present downside risks to household spending,” said NRF.

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Sept. 13. The most recent ruling is dated Sept. 12. The following headquarters rulings not involving carriers were "modified" on Sept. 13, according to CBP:

A year after launching its first smart home product, an in-wall light switch (see 1809050065) that manages music, thermostat and security via app or voice, Brilliant turned its sights to the builder community at this year’s CEDIA Expo, CEO Aaron Emigh told Consumer Electronics Daily.

President Donald Trump delayed for two weeks to Oct. 15 hiking to 30 percent the first three rounds of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods (see 1908290024) “as a gesture of good will,” he tweeted Wednesday. Trump said he did so at the request of Vice Premier Liu He, the lead Chinese trade negotiator, so the tariff increase wouldn’t coincide with China’s 70th anniversary celebration. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative didn’t respond to email queries Thursday about whether it will extend the comments deadline on the proposed tariff increase. Comments are due Sept. 20 in docket USTR-2019-0015.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has granted about 35 percent of the roughly 15,000 requests it received to have products excluded from Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, customs expert John Brew with Crowell & Moring told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar Thursday. “Frankly, there’s a bit of subjectivity in the requests that we’ve seen granted so far,” said Brew. “Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of what’s happening. Part of that is because I think the USTR is overwhelmed. They have tens of thousands of requests and only a few people working on them.” Brew recalled a client who got USTR notification that its exclusion requests had been denied, only to find out later in a Federal Register notice that all had been granted. “Things like that happen, and you just never know how USTR is going to decide, unfortunately,” he said. There’s no exclusion process “yet set” for the List 4 tariffs, said Brew. “That should be coming at some point in the near future. We just don’t know when that’s going to happen.” USTR didn’t comment.

President Donald Trump “overstepped his power” to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, “and our nation’s businesses and families are footing the bill,” said CTA President Gary Shapiro Wednesday, urging Congress to “intervene.” With fewer than 40 legislative days left this year, the Senate and House should hold hearings on S-899 and HR-3477, said Shapiro. The bills would raise congressional oversight of the Trump administration’s Trade Act Section 301 tariff actions but have gone nowhere since their introduction (see 1909020001). The legislation would “protect Americans from this seemingly endless trade war,” said Shapiro. “Congress has the power to review and should use its limited time left to investigate the scope and intent of the president’s misguided trade policy.”

Frustrations boiled over among the few whose comments were the first to be posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2019-0015 on the Trump administration’s proposal to hike by five points the first three rounds of Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent, effective Oct. 1 (see 1908290024). Several blasted President Donald Trump for falsely claiming China pays the tariffs, not U.S. importers or consumers. “The Chinese people, their government or the suppliers of the product are not paying these tariffs,” commented Christopher Grace, who gave no company or industry affiliation. “That List 4a & 4b were created instead of just 1 list, is evidence that the US government is concerned that consumers are going to be hurt.” Display Supply & Lighting (DS&L), which builds display booths for trade show exhibitors, including many at CES, needs to “immediately debunk the rhetoric that the Duty is a tax on China and is being paid by China,” wrote Vice President Robert Cohen. “This is nothing but a complete misstatement,” he said. “The Duty is being paid by our company, the Duty is being financed as part of the cost of our inventory and a portion of the Duty is then being passed along to our customer. There are no dollars from China paying any of the Duty on our products!” Cohen shared "my company’s frustration as to the amount of time the U.S. government has forced us to spend on non-revenue producing matters” involving the tariffs. DS&L spent considerable time and expense testifying against the tariffs last year at a hearing that “was nothing but a perfunctory exercise,” he wrote. It also expended “significant amounts of time” filing exclusion requests and educating employees “as to how to deal with the situation when customers contact us” to protest price increases, he said. He also resents “preparing this document which has a due date 9 days prior to the proposed imposition date of an increased duty rate," he said. Comments are due Sept. 20.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has granted about 35 percent of the roughly 15,000 requests it received to have products excluded from Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, customs expert John Brew with Crowell & Moring told a Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar on Sept. 12. “Frankly, there’s a bit of subjectivity in the requests that we’ve seen granted so far,” Brew said. “Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of what’s happening. Part of that is because I think the USTR is overwhelmed. They have tens of thousands of requests and only a few people working on them.” Brew recalled a client which got USTR notification that its exclusion requests had been denied, only to find out later in a Federal Register notice that all had been granted. “Things like that happen, and you just never know how USTR is going to decide, unfortunately,” he said. There’s no exclusion process “yet set” for the List 4 tariffs, Brew said. “That should be coming at some point in the near future. We just don’t know when that’s going to happen.” USTR didn’t comment.

President Donald Trump “overstepped his power” to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, “and our nation’s businesses and families are footing the bill,” said CTA President Gary Shapiro Wednesday, urging Congress to “intervene.” With fewer than 40 legislative days left this year, the Senate and House should hold hearings on S-899 and HR-3477, said Shapiro. The bills would raise congressional oversight of the Trump administration’s Trade Act Section 301 tariff actions but have gone nowhere since their introduction (see 1909020001). The legislation would “protect Americans from this seemingly endless trade war,” said Shapiro. “Congress has the power to review and should use its limited time left to investigate the scope and intent of the president’s misguided trade policy.”