The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced that considerable progress was made during the sixth round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in Singapore, which ended the week of April 1, 2011. The nine1 TPP negotiating countries moved forward on legal texts, narrowed gaps on positions, and considered new proposals by the U.S. on regulatory coherence, supply chains, and facilitating business.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the March 2011 ACE Trade Account Owner Update, which provides information on the ACE deployment of Importer Security Filing reports for C-TPAT members, ISF status queries for Portal accounts, etc.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a final rule, effective March 17, 2011, to finalize its interim rule that eliminated the textile declaration and added new Manufacturer Identification Code (MID) requirements for textiles and apparel. The final rule adopts the October 2005 interim rule, with changes, such as excluding personal use shipments from the MID requirement, and limiting the MID requirement for textiles and apparel outside of HTS Section XI to those with category numbers.
On March 4, 2011, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack provided additional details about the recent meeting between the U.S. and Mexican presidents regarding the proposed agreement to resolve the U.S.-Mexico cross-border long-haul trucking dispute.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s fiscal year 2012 budget request is for $122 million, a 3.2% increase over the FY 2010 enacted funding level. CPSC states that this request level will allow it to continue work implementing and enforcing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), administer the public database of consumer product safety incidents, and fund other CPSC priorities.