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ANNOUNCEMENT 03 Jun 2011
In June 2011, the government of the United States of America announced a change in import duties.NUMBER OF INTERVENTIONS
1
SOURCE
See the hyperlinked material in the description.
In a proposed rule published in the June 3, 2011 issue of the Federal Register the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) of the United States seeks to increase the value assigned to imported cotton for the purpose of calculating supplemental assessments collected for use by the Cotton Research and Promotion Program. This proposal would lead to a relatively modest increase in the fee itself but a much greater expansion in the range of products to which the fee is applied.
The proposed rule would expand from 706 to 2,371 the number of Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS)* statistical reporting numbers that are subject to the fee. According to the proposal, "Inclusion of these additional HTS codes will allow the Program to assess almost 100 percent of imported raw cotton and cotton-containing products, as it does with the domestic producer assessment. By expanding AMS' list to include 2,371 HTS codes and using the current assessment rate of 1.088 cents per kilogram, the Cotton Research and Promotion Program could have collected approximately $4.8 million more in 2009."
AMS says that an amendment is required to adjust the supplemental assessment and ensure that assessments collected on imported raw cotton and the cotton content of imported cotton-containing products and assessments collected on domestically produced cotton are the same. Under this proposed rule, assessments on imported cotton would be raised from $0.01088 per kilogram to $0.012665 per kilogram. Funds collected are earmarked for research and promotion programs to increase consumer demand for upland cotton.
Comments on the proposed rule are due by July 5, 2011.
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* :The HTS is the U.S. version of the Harmonized System of tariff nomenclature.