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Fiona BrennanWebinar Q&ACustoms Procedures

Q&A thread: CBAM Definitive Period webinar, post your questions early

This is the live thread for Wednesday's session with Anna Lindqvist. Post your questions before the webinar and we will take them in order; the thread stays open afterwards for follow-ups. Pre-submitted questions get answered first, that's the reward for showing up early.

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  • Peter Walsh replied: Pre-submitting: our steel supplier will only provide emissions data once a year, audited in Q1. Is annual data acceptabl…
  • Emma Visser replied: Question for the session: do we need to purchase CBAM certificates before the October filing, or only hold enough by the…
  • Anna Lindqvist replied: Great questions, both queued for Wednesday. Short preview on the annual-data point: yes, with an installation-level atte…
  • Chiara Rossi replied: Pre-submitting: how does the definitive period interact with customs value when the carbon cost is invoiced separately b…
  • Priya Raghavan replied: Also for the session, please: the small-consignment threshold. Does it apply per import or per declarant per year, and d…

7 discussing

Broker wants full origin paperwork and mill certs on a parcel of branded giveaways worth under a thousand dollars: is this normal now?

We sent a small parcel to a new US office: branded shirts and mugs, a handful of spare steel fittings, some stickers. Total value under a thousand dollars. Our broker is treating it like a full commercial entry: manufacturer and origin details for the textiles, mill certificates for the steel, and a flag that some of the codes we gave him could carry antidumping or countervailing exposure. DHL has moved this kind of parcel for us before without asking any of this. So before I push back on the invoice: is a broker filing a formal entry on something this small doing his job properly, or padding the file?

Tariffs & HS CodesTomás Ferreirajust now155

Bringing a US-titled 1986 pickup back from Mexico after decades there: do EPA and DOT rules even apply since it started out American?

Client has a 1986 pickup, originally titled in California, exported to Mexico in 2002 and registered there in his name ever since. He has the original US title, the export paperwork, and the current Mexican registration. He wants it back in the US and is asking me whether EPA and DOT rules even apply to something that started out American, and whether he is looking at duty on the way back in. I don't file personal vehicle entries often enough to answer this from memory, and I don't want to guess on something with his name on it.

Customs ProceduresDale Whitcombjust now145

FedEx's IEEPA portal shows refunds 'received' as far back as May: nothing paid out, no explanation of channel

We were named importer of record on entries FedEx filed under their own bond, and the portal has shown some of them as refund received since May. FedEx's own site said payment would start on 10 August, but nobody there, not the portal and not customer service, will say by what channel: wire, cheque, or credited back to whatever was used at entry. Customer service just redirects you to the same portal that already told you nothing. Is the hold-up something in how the refund itself moves through the system, or is this a courier sitting on money it already has?

Tariffs & HS CodesTomás Ferreirajust now155

Classification that used to take five minutes now takes four hours. How is anyone pricing that?

I have spent close to four hours today classifying a single article out of Brazil. Two years ago it was a five-minute job. The article has not changed. Everything around it has. I am not asking anyone for their rate. I am asking how the work is being priced now, because a flat entry fee written when classification was quick does not survive this. Either the fee moves or the time comes out of somewhere else, and there is nowhere else. Per line? Hourly on top of the entry? Absorbed and renegotiated at renewal? I want to know what is actually holding up in practice, not what sounds defensible.

Tariffs & HS CodesDale Whitcombjust now135

What is everyone actually running for tariff calculation, beyond Excel and the published schedule?

Every quote I put together right now starts the same way: pull the schedule, work the layers by hand, hope nothing has shifted since the last one I ran. Fine for one shipment. Not fine when I am pricing five in a morning and the client wants an answer before lunch. Plenty of desks are still doing this in a spreadsheet, and that is a perfectly good answer if it actually holds up at volume. What I want to know is what people use once it stops holding up: something built for this, something homegrown, or is the spreadsheet still the honest answer even at scale?

Tariffs & HS CodesTomás Ferreirajust now84

One-time drawback claim over $10,000: the broker who filed the import won't touch drawback, and nobody else will take it on

I've got a one-time drawback claim to file (duty over $10,000 on non-conforming goods), and the broker who handled the original import doesn't do drawback at all. Everyone else I've called either wants a bigger claim than mine or only takes clients they already work with regularly. I can fill out most of the paperwork myself; it's only a handful of SKUs. Is a claim this size just not worth anyone's time, or am I looking for the wrong kind of firm? I'd rather understand that than keep getting turned down without knowing why.

Customs ProceduresHana Satojust now145

CBAM report kicked back over default values, what now?

Our Q2 CBAM submission used default values for two Turkish steel suppliers who won't share emissions data. The registry flagged the report because defaults are no longer accepted for those CN codes without a documented data request trail. What does an acceptable 'we tried' file actually look like, emails? formal letters? contract clauses?

Customs ProceduresTomasz Kowalski19h ago156

CSMS 69535943 appears to end drawback on the new 301 tariffs, but I cannot find that in the underlying order

A CBP bulletin, a CSMS message, started circulating that reads as though drawback (the refund on duties for goods that are later exported) is no longer available for the newest round of 301 tariffs. I went back through the executive order and the Federal Register notice that created this round of tariffs and could not find anything that mentions drawback, in either direction. I am two years into this role, so I am not confident I am reading the right documents, or reading them correctly. Has anyone confirmed whether the bulletin reflects an actual change to the underlying order, or is it possible the bulletin itself went further than what was actually enacted?

Customs ProceduresHana Satojust now54