Effective Thursday, February 13th, Canadian National Railway (CN) announced that it would begin a progressive shutdown of its Eastern Network services in light of the illegal protests against the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline. Thus far, CN has already canceled over 400 trains along its Eastern Canadian corridor. Though officials have successfully obtained assistance from enforcement […]

On Monday, February 10th, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced an additional set of product exclusions from Section 301 List 1 Chinese tariffs. The List 1 notice contains 4 specially prepared product descriptions that are completely excluded from the 25% tariffs. The Section 301 List 1 tariffs initially spanned 818 products and […]

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that an additional item will be excluded from Section 301 List 3 Chinese tariffs. The List 3 notice contains 1 HTS subheadings completely excluded from 25% tariffs. The notice also includes five updates to existing List 3 exclusions. The latest round of exclusions will retroactively apply to all […]

Per our previous Shap Flash, President Trump authorized the U.S. to impose an additional 25% tariff on certain steel products — and an additional 10% tariff on certain aluminum products — in response to the lack of positive results from existing 232 tariffs. The U.S. Department of Commerce has now released an official list of […]

Related to yesterday’s ShapFlash: in wake of the rapidly spreading Coronavirus, the Chinese government has decided to extend its Lunar New Year an additional 3 days– from January 30th to February 2nd – in all cities except Shanghai and Ningbo. In the Shanghai and Ningbo provinces, which are closer to Wuhan, the New Year extensions […]

The deadly Coronavirus, which has already negatively impacted trade, has now claimed up to 80 lives and infected over 2,700 people. Wuhan, which served as ground zero for the outbreak, is still actively in the process of cancelling events and imposing mandatory quarantines. In a report released this weekend, the Chinese government had already decided […]

In a statement made on Friday, January 24th, President Trump announced the imposition of an additional 25% tariff on certain steel products—and an additional 10% tariff on certain aluminum products—that  will go into effect on February 8th. The President cited the lack of positive results from existing 232 tariffs, amidst a surge of steel and […]

China has commenced the process of reducing the number of ships calling the city of Wuhan in an effort to avoid the further spread of the Coronavirus, a deadly respiratory infection that first catalyzed in central China last week. A number of ships have been left idling along the Yangtze River, which serves as an […]

Additional Section 301 tariffs that were set to be imposed against imports of French champagne, cheeses and handbags (among other products) will no longer take effect. The additional tariffs were originally introduced in retaliation to France’s proposed digital service tax, which would have negatively impacted Google, Facebook and other large U.S. operators. On Tuesday, January […]

On Wednesday, January 15th, the U.S. and China officially ratified Phase One of their planned trade deal. The key component of Phase One involves China’s purchase of an additional $200 billion in American exports. At this time, it does not appear that the USTR has specified the exact purchases to be made, but has rather […]

According to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will be ratified at some point this week. Click HERE to view our previous Shap Flash that provides more detail and insight into the USMCA. Shapiro will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as they become available.

Chinese New Year (CNY) 2020 will commence on Saturday, January 25th.  As usual, it is expected to be accompanied by the typical pre-holiday surge and post-holiday deluge of blank sailings implemented by the carriers. Manufacturing in China will begin to cease as early as Thursday, January 16th, with most factories opening their doors again during […]

If your products are impacted by the Section 301 List 4A tariffs, please remember that the exclusion filing deadline is Friday, January 31st, 2020. The official exclusion request portal can be accessed HERE. Please reach out to us at [email protected] should you require any assistance with the exclusion filing process. Shapiro will also continue to […]

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced an additional set of product exclusions from Section 301 List 3 Chinese tariffs. The List 3 notice contains 2 HTS subheadings completely excluded from 25% tariffs, and 66 partially excluded subheadings, which cover 81 separate requests respectively. According to the USTR, the latest round of exclusions will retroactively […]

The U.S. – Japan Trade Agreement officially took effect on Wednesday, January 1st, 2020. Per our previous Shap Flash, the Agreement will actively reduce agricultural/industrial tariffs and digital trade barriers between the two countries. In order to receive preferential treatment under this new Agreement, a good must be originating and meet all the requirements of […]

The office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is seeking comments regarding the extension of exclusions on the second round of Section 301 List 1 exclusions, which are currently set to expire on March 25, 2020. This extension would add another year of validity to the current product exclusions. The USTR’s evaluation will primarily focus […]

On Thursday, December 19th, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that just 6 (six) exclusions from the first round of Section 301 tariff exclusions on List 1 goods will be granted extensions. As the exclusions for the first round of List 1 goods were set to expire on December 28th, 2019, this […]

Despite speculation that the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (CBMA) would expire prior to next year, CBMA was included in a tax extenders package that was approved by Congress yesterday, December 17th. Within the new extended package, CBMA will remain in effect through all of 2020. For more information on CBMA and how […]

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has officially announced that the additional 15% tariffs on $160 billion of List 4B products that were set to take effect on December 15th are suspended indefinitely. Per our previous Flashes, President Trump announced last Friday that the U.S. would not be imposing the additional 15% tariffs […]

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released additional sets of product exclusions from Section 301 Chinese tariffs. The USTR notices feature several announcements, each containing the specially prepared HTS subheadings excluded from either List 1, 2 and 3 tariffs. The List 3 notice contains 35 HTS subheadings partially excluded from 25% tariffs, and 9 […]