News has been coming to us fast and wild this month as the USTR and President Trump use the new year to finalize their trade policies that have been in the works for more than a year. From the US/China negotiations and “Phase One” agreement to the WTO Airbus decision and how it impacts wine tariffs, the newly announced steel tariffs, there’s no shortage of news to report. We’ve decided that instead of trying to craft a full worldwide narrative on this specific issue today, we’d use a simple overview with everything you need to know to plan for the new, newly cancelled, and newly postponed tariffs that we’ve heard about.
US and China Phase One – With the agreement signed and the list 4b tariffs cancelled, the remaining list 4a tariffs will be reduced from 15% to 7.5% on February 14, 2020 as the Chinese have agreed to substantial agriculture buys and some banking changes to make it easier for American companies to compete in their enormous market. There has been no change to the first 3 lists of tariffs but analysts expect those to be handled as negotiations continue between the nations. List 4a tariffs can be found here.
- IMPORTANT! If you are aware or suspect that any of your current shipments contain subject commodity and will be arriving to the United States on or near February 14. At this time, WHETHER TO IT (IN-BOND) SHIPMENTS WITH SUBJECT COMMODITY THAT ARE SCHEDULED TO ARRIVE TO THEIR FIRST PORT ON OR NEAR FEB 14 SHOULD BE VERY CAREFULLY EVALUATED. THIS IS BECAUSE AN IT DATE PRIOR TO FEB 14 WOULD PREVENT APPLICABLE CARGO FROM RECEIVING THE REDUCED RATE!
French Digital tax response tariffs on sparkling wines – These tariffs have been postponed until the end of 2020 as the US and France work out an agreement. This is only regarding the tariffs that (up to 100%) impact French imports directly and is not part of the WTO Airbus decision that has many European wines seeing a duty of 25%.
Aluminum and steel tariffs – As announced on the evening of Friday January 24th, the Trump Administration will expand tariffs on Aluminum at 10% and steel imports at 25% to further protect US national security beginning February 8, 2020. Though these tariffs are nothing new, they usually applied to the commodity itself but will now include “downstream” parts like nails, staples, machine and car parts. Argentina, Australia, Canada and Mexico were exempted from the additional aluminum tariffs. As for the steel tariffs, exemptions were allowed for Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, Mexico and South Korea.
If you have any questions about how these changes impact your cargo, feel free to reach out to your Everglory representative to discuss. We’ll keep watching the developments and reporting back with any new information.
