A wrong NICO can suspend the whole desk, but the origin certificate stops at six digits: who owns the last two?

Alejandra Solis mxCustoms Broker · A customs brokerage on the northern border, Monterrey

Two digits that, por diseño, decide nothing. That is the part I keep chewing.

Published yesterday, live today: a broker or an importer suspended out of the electronic system for an inexact NICO now has a written way back. Rebut the ground, or post the guarantee by rectifying the pedimento, ficha 20/LA, five days for them to lift it when it is in order.

But the NICO is the two digits hanging off the eight digit fraction, and the people who assign them say plainly it imposes no duty and no restriction the fraction did not already carry. Meanwhile the general rate on a long list of lines moved in January, so more of my southbound loads live or die on a T-MEC claim, and a certification only has to name six digits. The vendor gives me the origin. Nobody gives me the last two.

So who carries them on your side? Do you make the vendor declare a NICO in the packet, or do you eat it and hope the audit is kind?

Asked 23 Sept 2026

2 replies

Marcus Liewsg2w ago

The real issue here is not the two digits. You are treating one code as a single object when it is two objects glued together.

First, the harmonised part of any classification stops at six digits. That is all the treaty partners ever agreed, and all a preference certification is entitled to ask for. Everything past six is national: your fraction, your NICO, the tails my own markets bolt on. The certification cannot carry the last two, because the exporter is not classifying into your tariff. He is classifying into the shared one.

Second, that makes the NICO an importer obligation wearing a supplier's costume. Nobody abroad is competent to give it to you.

So do not ask the vendor for a NICO. Ask him in the supply contract for what he can actually give: a specification precise enough that you derive the suffix yourself, and written notice before he changes material or formulation. A spec clause and a change notice clause. The desk that holds both classifies once and files the same way twice.

This reply was deleted.

Alejandra Solismx2w agoAuthor

Both of you moved it off the vendor's packet and into my contract, and that is where it belongs. Monday I pull the part numbers we file most, write the classification date on each, and walk them again when the tail list reissues. Nothing arrives to tell me it moved.

What still does not work is the order. The suspension can run to a calendar month and it lands the day I file, not the day the number changed. Five days to lift it reads fine. My trucks do not wait five days.

2 replies

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