Project cargo & oversize

Project cargo is not a container problem scaled up. It is an entry where the value, the classification and the schedule are all unusual at once, and where the release has to land on a date fixed months ago by a crane booking and a road permit. One press brake, one transformer, one process module. If it is late, nothing else on the site happens.

One machine, several conveyances

A plant that ships knocked down is still a plant. Under the general rules of interpretation an article presented unassembled is classified as the finished article so long as it has the essential character of it, which is why a disassembled machine is entered as a machine and not as structural steel, motors and pumps at four rates. The error runs both ways: parts entered as a machine that is not really there is what CBP finds at review.

Where an entity is too large to move in one piece, the regulations allow a single entry to cover portions arriving separately, on application and inside the window the rule sets. It has to be arranged before the first piece lands. Once four bills of lading have been entered separately, the machine was imported as parts and the question is closed.

Value is where the money hides

On an ordinary entry a valuation question is a rounding error. On a project entry it is the largest number in the file. Three things move it.

• Assists. Tooling, dies, materials and engineering or design work performed outside the United States and given to the manufacturer free or below cost must be added to the price. Buyers forget the engineering, because it was never invoiced.
• Erection and commissioning. Charges for construction, assembly, erection, maintenance or technical assistance carried out after importation are not part of the dutiable value, provided they are identified separately from the price of the goods. On a turnkey contract that is a large deduction, available only if the contract is written to show it.
• Progress payments. The dutiable value is the total price paid or payable for the goods, not the tranche invoiced with the shipment. We would rather read the contract than guess from a payment schedule.

These are contract-drafting questions, not paperwork questions. Bring us in while the purchase order is still being written and they are free to answer. Bring us in at the pier and they are not.

Steel content and AD/CVD scope

The Section 232 derivative lists have grown well past raw metal and now reach fabricated product: structural components, tanks, prefabricated buildings, modules and parts. On a derivative line the metal content is reported and dutied separately, on the country where the steel was melted and poured or the aluminium smelted and cast, while the rest of the article is dutied on its own basis. A bill of material giving weight and value by component, with mill certificates behind it, is what stands between paying the metal rate on the steel in a module and paying it on the module. Section 232 content.

Antidumping and countervailing orders are the exposure that can end a project economically. Orders cover scope descriptions, and project shipments are full of goods that fall inside one without anyone intending it: welded pipe, forged fittings, fasteners, wire rope, racking, utility scale wind towers. A triple-digit cash deposit rate on a heavy-lift entry is not a line item, it is a renegotiation. Where the answer is genuinely uncertain a scope ruling from Commerce settles it, and that takes months, which is why the question belongs at sourcing. AD/CVD, in detail.

Equipment that is not staying

• ATA Carnet. Professional equipment, commercial samples and goods for exhibition enter temporarily against a carnet valid for a year. It does not cover consumables, goods sent for processing, or anything sold here, and the counterfoils must be endorsed both ways. Miss the export endorsement and the guarantee is called.
• Temporary import bond. Where a carnet is not available, a TIB brings goods in without duty against an undertaking to export within the period, with the bond at stake if the date passes. Temporary import bonds.
• US goods returned, and repairs.Equipment of US origin coming home can return free of duty, and goods sent out for repair are dutiable on the value of the work rather than the machine. Both need the export documented, plus a manufacturer’s affidavit and a foreign shipper’s declaration above the threshold. This is why importers pay duty twice on their own machinery.

Where project entries go wrong

• The bond is too small. A continuous bond is sized on the previous year of duties, taxes and fees. One project entry at current metal rates can exceed its sufficiency, and CBP will demand it be raised or a single transaction bond placed before the goods move. That is a week nobody budgeted.
• The schedule assumed a release. The crane, the escorts and the road permits are booked around a date. An examination does not care. We file as early as the regulations allow and tell the project manager the same day something moves, so the crane can be rebooked rather than paid for.
• The invoice describes a project, not goods. One line reading process equipment against a seven-figure value is not an entry.

What we need from you

• The purchase contract, including whatever covers engineering, erection, commissioning and payment terms.
• An equipment list or bill of material with weights, values and materials by component, plus mill certificates for metal content.
• The shipping plan: how many conveyances, which ports, what arrives when.
• Export records if any of it is US goods returned, and your current bond so we can test it against the duty this project will generate.