The Miscellaneous Tariff Bill 2020 - next steps

Back in October 2019 we presented the business opportunity for our readers to seek a possible duty suspension/reduction bill for Congress to consider.

The article mentions the AMCA and how you a new process was setup to take advantage.

The American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act (AMCA) of 2016 provides companies the opportunities to help reduce some of their manufacturing for their produced goods.

The following actions/steps were enacted:

As required by the Act, on October 11, 2019, the Commission published a notice in the Federal Register announcing that the period for submitting petitions had begun. The notice stated that members of the public could begin submitting petitions to the Commission through its online Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Petition System (MTBPS) for a 60-day period, ending on December 10, 2019.  In submitting your petition to the commission, the following criteria is required:

  • Whether there is domestic production of an article that is identical to, like, or directly competitive with the article that is the subject of a petition and whether a domestic producer of the article objects to the duty suspension or reduction; 
  • Whether the duty suspension or reduction is available to any person that imports the article;
  • Whether the duty suspension or reduction can likely be administered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP or Customs); and
  • Whether the estimated loss in revenue to the United States from the duty suspension or reduction does not exceed $500,000 in a calendar year during which it would be in effect.    

 

The Act directs the Commission to place each petition into one of six categories depending upon whether the petition meets the requirements of the Act without modification (Category I), meets the requirements of the Act with certain modifications (Categories II, III, and IV), or does not meet the requirements of the Act (Categories V and VI).

As of June 2020, the following product groups, number, and petitions were submitted for further recommendation:

So with this information in mind – what are the next steps for the MTB 2020 process?
The International Trade Commission will be accepting public comments on specific petitions that have been placed into a section known as Category VI. Petitions that the Commission does not otherwise recommend for inclusion in a miscellaneous tariff bill, for a 10-day period ending June 22, 2020.  

The ITC will then send their final report to Congress in August, Congress will then make the final decision on all listed products that will then appear in the MTB for 2020. Congress needs to approve the bill and pass the bill off to the White House for approval.

In the past, these last steps have proven to be quite lengthy; therefore let’s keep our fingers crossed that we see the MTB2020 enacted in 2020.