Nearly 100,000 companies in the United Kingdom have now been automatically registered to use that country’s Transitional Simplified Procedures if there’s a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31, U.K. HM Revenue & Customs said in a press release. TSP simplifies procedures importing, and make it especially easier for companies completing customs procedures for the first time, but up to now only about 30,000 had applied. Among the benefits of TSP are a six-month period to submit customs declarations and pay customs duties after importing goods from the European Union. “This will prevent congestion at the border when goods enter” the U.K., HMRC said.
The United Kingdom’s HM Revenue & Customs on Oct. 10 issued new guidance documents outlining procedures for importing and exporting excise goods between the U.K. and the European Union after Brexit. “After Brexit, imports of excise goods from the EU will be treated the same as imports from the rest of the world. This includes moving imported excise goods within the UK,” the guidance said. The Simplified Accompanying Administrative Document (SAAD) and EU distance-selling arrangements will no longer be used, and a customs declaration will have to be completed, though a full declaration may not be necessary if transitional simplified procedures are used, it said.
The government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices as of Oct. 11 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):
President Donald Trump announced a "very substantial phase 1" deal in the Oval Office Oct. 11, saying the Chinese and American negotiators came to a deal on intellectual property, financial services and agricultural sales. The president said China will buy as much as $40 billion to $50 billion worth of American commodities. He also said good progress had been made on issues around technology transfer from American companies to Chinese partners.
In the Oct. 10 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
The European Commission is referring Hungary to the European Union Court of Justice for failing to apply the minimum EU threshold for excise duties on cigarettes, the commission said in an Oct. 10 press release. Hungary’s low duty rate creates “distortions of competition with other Member States and is at odds with EU health protection policy,” the commission said. Hungary has been given a “long transitional period” to comply with the EU’s minimum 60 percent excise duty, the press release said.
Business and labor leaders and government insider panelists agreed that the U.S.-China trade war will be difficult to unravel, but disagreed on how quickly Democrats could -- or should -- resolve outstanding issues on the NAFTA rewrite. The trade panel Oct. 10, hosted by Fiscal Note, included Clete Willems, former White House deputy assistant to the president for international economics, who said that although it pained him to say it, "The political conditions in both countries are just not conducive to the big deal."
In the Oct. 9 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:
Mexico’s Secretariat of Finance recently issued its 2019 edition of its General Regulations on Foreign Trade. Among other things, the new edition changes the deadline for customs clearance of disassembled machines, production lines or disassembled prefabricated buildings to 90 calendar days (previously it was a period of three months), said a circular from the Mexican Confederation of Customs Broker Associations (CAAAREM). The change takes effect Dec. 1, 2019. More information is available in a Latin American Confederation of Customs Brokers (CLAA) circular.
The Commerce Department’s Oct. 9 blacklisting of several Chinese technology companies may not impact trade negotiations this week but could lead to significant retaliation against U.S. companies, trade experts said. And while the Trump administration insisted the Entity List decisions were unrelated to trade talks with China, the move unnerved U.S. companies impacted by the trade war that fear Commerce’s announcement could expedite the release of China’s so-called "unreliable entity list."