Resources

The tariff itself, published by the US International Trade Commission and revised during the year. Search the live edition rather than a saved PDF: chapter and section notes decide as many classifications as the headings do, and both move.

Every classification and valuation ruling CBP has issued, searchable in full text. If goods like yours have been ruled on, the reasoning is here, and reading three rulings against your product tells you more than a week of arguing from the headings.

CBP guidance on the additional-duty programmes, including how the extra tariff lines are ordered and coded on an entry. The programme decides the duty; the coding decides whether the entry transmits.

The docket system for antidumping and countervailing duty cases. Petitions, scope rulings and cash-deposit instructions appear here first, usually well before an importer hears about them from anyone else.

US import statistics by tariff line and country of origin. A blunt but effective sanity check: if nobody imports your product under the number you picked, that is worth knowing before you file it a hundred times.

Customs duties, continuously updated. Entry, bonds, drawback, recordkeeping and broker conduct are defined here rather than in anyone’s guide, including ours.

Proposed and final rules, quota notices and the legal text behind an announcement. When a trade action is reported in the press, this is the document it was reported from.

The Commerce side: AD/CVD initiations, preliminary and final determinations, scope decisions and administrative reviews. This is where a rate you have been depositing for a year gets changed retroactively.

Operational instructions to the trade: how to code a new action, which ACE systems are down, when a quota goes to proration. Often the only written guidance that exists before the formal notice catches up.

The current version of every CBP form, including the power of attorney, the bond application and the entry summary. Check the revision date in the corner against whatever you were sent.

CBP’s own primer for importers. Formal and behind the times on tariff programmes, but authoritative on process, valuation and recordkeeping, and it costs nothing.

The licence framework, including what a broker may and may not do on your behalf. Worth reading once, if only to know what you are entitled to ask of whoever files your entries.

The system every entry is transmitted into. Importers can hold an ACE portal account of their own and read their entry, statement and liquidation data directly, without asking a broker for a screenshot.

Tariff-rate quota bulletins and fill rates. It matters the day your commodity is under quota: the rate changes when the quota fills, not when you booked the vessel.

Prior Notice, foreign supplier verification, facility registration and how FDA screens an entry. Applies to food, drugs, devices, radiation-emitting products and more categories than most importers expect.

Where registrations and Prior Notice submissions are actually made. Registrations expire on a fixed cycle, and a lapsed one stops a shipment as completely as a bad label does.

Facility registration and product listing for cosmetics. A large share of cosmetic importers were outside FDA registration before MoCRA and still assume they are.

Federal basic permits, label approval and excise tax on alcohol. TTB compliance runs alongside the customs entry rather than after it, and a missing permit is not something a broker can file around.

The emissions side of a vehicle, engine or equipment import, including the exemptions people rely on for older cars and the declaration that has to carry them.

The regulator for ocean carrier and terminal billing practices, and where a demurrage or detention invoice for time nobody could have used is challenged.