Has anyone else read CSMS 69535943? It reads as CBP saying there is no drawback on the new 301 tariffs. One of our clients runs exactly the flow this touches: goods come into the US and pay the 301 duty, come back out through our desk, and the drawback, the refund of that duty on re-export, is a real part of the margin. The containers will keep moving either way. The question is whether the refund behind them just disappeared. Before I speak to the client I do not want to tell them drawback is gone on the strength of one message that may say more than it means. Is CBP actually doing this?
Read the message next to the documents it leans on. The executive order says nothing about drawback. The Federal Register notice says nothing. The 301 statute says nothing. A CSMS message tells the trade how CBP intends to process something; it does not make law on its own. This one was drafted badly. Do not tell your client drawback is gone on the back of it. Tell them the message and the paper behind it do not match, and that is the problem CBP has to fix.
Two questions here, not one. First, can CBP withdraw drawback on these tariffs? The order, the notice and the 301 statute are silent on drawback, so a message removing it on the agency's authority alone would be open to challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act, which is likely to go your way. Second, what happens to claims while the message stands? The answer is less comfortable: filings are handled as the message reads until it is corrected. In practice your client's claims wait; they are not lost.
I read the CSMS (Cargo Systems Messaging Service, the notices CBP sends the trade) after your post. If a CSMS message is only CBP telling the trade how it will process something, what happens to a drawback claim filed while the message stands and before any correction? Is it refused, or does it sit? I had assumed a notice like that always pointed back to a document I could open, and this one does not seem to, which surprised me.
Nothing I file turns on this, but my quotations do: some of what I ship into the US is re-exported by my customers, and their margins assume drawback on the duty they paid. By this evening three drawback brokers had told them the message was written wrongly and that no executive order mentions drawback, and one had heard from CBP that a correction is coming. My decision is whether to hold open quotations until that correction appears, and nobody has offered a date.
