TradeLane

In the world of international trade, Canadian businesses often face the challenge of navigating customs duties, which can significantly impact their overall profitability. Fortunately, the Canadian Duty Drawback program offers a valuable opportunity to recover these duties and boost financial well-being. This program, often overlooked by many businesses, holds immense potential for companies that regularly engage in import and export activities.

The Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) is open to members of the trade community who demonstrate a commitment to practices that help to secure the supply chain. Training is a critical component of that commitment. CTPAT members must establish and maintain a comprehensive security training and awareness program. Personnel of CTPAT members must understand the threats to the supply chain and their role in protecting it. Typically, CTPAT members should have general security awareness training that they provide to a wide audience and specialized training that is presented to personnel in more sensitive positions.

On December 19th, 2023, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued ruling HQ H326926. A US Customs Broker inquired in the ruling as to whether an unlicensed offshore third party could be granted access to its ABI system to prepare customs entry data using shipment documents and other referenced information. In this proposed process flow, the US Customs Broker would review, analyze, and correct any errors or omissions in the prepared data before submitting a completed 7501 entry into the United States.

Like classification and country of origin, Customs Valuation is a crucial element of trade compliance. Valuation has always been a key focus of Customs administrations, as it will primarily affect the import customs duty and import VAT of imported goods, VAT refund of exported goods, and other important statistical considerations.

As our Vice President Michael Bellezza spoke about on June 26^th, the pace of change in trade compliance regulations and requirements has never been swifter than in the past five years.

The United States market is not unique in grappling with these regulatory challenges. However, the formality with which US Customs & Border Protection, the US Bureau of Industry and Security, and other relevant government agencies enforce regulations, combined with the market size and trade volumes most US-based customers must manage, make this a jurisdiction where strategy and forethought are especially key to ensure trade compliance departments meet their goals.