The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has published interim rules that will govern the submission and consideration of petitions for duty suspensions and reductions under the new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) process. Under MTB, U.S. manufacturers and other likely beneficiaries may obtain possible savings of up to $500,000 on imported articles not otherwise available in the United States, such as raw materials or other key inputs. Potential beneficiaries should consider consulting with an experienced legal adviser to maximize any duty relief (e.g., by properly defining and researching the product) and to ensure that the company’s petition(s) satisfy the petitioning requirements. Any relief granted under the MTB ultimately will remain in effect for three years, unless renewed.
As explained by the ITC, all MTB petitions must be filed electronically via a portal that will soon be available on the agency’s website. The ITC anticipates that the petition filing portal will launch on October 14. The portal will remain open for 60 days. After that, the ITC will solicit comments on the petitions from members of the public. This process will culminate in preliminary and final ITC reports with recommendations to Congress on whether to include the requested duty reductions or suspensions in any MTB legislation. Among other things, Congress must ensure that duty suspension or reduction for a particular article does not exceed $500,000 in a calendar year. This threshold should not outweigh the benefits of MTB relief in most cases, however, because duties are usually calculated as a percentage of the total value of the imported product. Thus, $500,000 in duty savings typically equates to a much higher volume of imports. For a company that obtains relief on many imported materials, the duty savings could be substantial.
The ITC anticipates significant participation in the new MTB process, which passed Congress with broad bipartisan support earlier this year. Additional background and discussion of the potential benefits for U.S. manufacturers is provided in a recent article from the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
