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ARTICLE · 08 JANUARY 2019

USTR Grants First Product Exclusion Requests From Section 301 Tariffs

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In March 2018, following its investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. § 2411) ("Section 301")...

United StatesInternational Law
Lars-Erik Hjelm
Lars-Erik Hjelm
Suzanne Kane
Suzanne Kane
Andrew R. Schlossberg
Andrew R. Schlossberg
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Key Points

  • Late on Friday, December 21, 2018, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) quietly announced that it has granted the first product exclusions for products covered by "List 1" of the Section 301 tariffs, effective December 28, 2018. The announcement came three days after the product exclusion requests for products covered by the "List 2" tariffs were due.
  • The granted exclusions cover all products within seven 10-digit subheadings (covering 918 separate product exclusion requests) and 24 specially prepared product descriptions (covering 66 product exclusion requests).
  • Since the exclusions are retroactive to July 6, 2018, and cover all imports of an excluded product regardless of importer, we recommend that importers carefully review the list of excluded products to see whether the exclusions cover any of their imported merchandise.

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