Under CUSMA, Canada has agreed to maintain a de minimis threshold of at least CAD$150.00 for customs duties, and CAD$40.00 for taxes, at the time or point of importation of goods shipped by courier from the United States or Mexico. There are otherwise no changes to Canada’s existing de minimis framework.
Accordingly, postal shipments from the U.S. or Mexico, as well as any courier or postal shipments from any other country, will continue to have a customs duty and tax remission threshold value of up to CAD$20.00.
Please note that the new thresholds will apply as of the date CUSMA enters into force — July 1, 2020 — and, for greater clarity, time of importation means the time of release.
Canada Border Services Agency is offering duty relief on eligible goods, via Customs Notice 20-19, Certain Goods Remission Order (COVID-19).
The relief applies to goods which were imported into Canada on or after May 5, 2020. This relief can be claimed at the time of importation or within two years of the date of importation.
CBSA has noted a number of eligible items for duty relief that can be applied by your customs broker. Importers must be able to furnish evidence that the goods are eligible for exemption, as listed in Appendix A of Customs Notice 20-19.
Goods eligible for relief under the Certain Goods Remission Order (COVID-19) include:
Face and Eye Protection
Gloves
Protective Garments and the Like
Disinfectants/Sterilization products
Medical Consumables
Other Products
For an exhaustive list, including tariff item numbers and description of eligible goods, please refer to Appendix A.
We have reviewed this notice, and are available to discuss how duty relief may apply to your business. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, or any other trade-related information, please do not hesitate to reach out at any time.
CUSMA/USMCA is North America’s new free trade agreement that is coming into effect July 1. Join Carson President, Tyler Carson, and Vice President, Dave Pentland, who will help you understand how this agreement differs from NAFTA and how it will impact your business.
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2020 Time: 11:00 AM (PDT)
The webinar will be recorded and made available following the live presentation.
Customs brokers help remove barriers in global trade for their clients by facilitating the import and export of goods across international borders. Whether you’re an individual, small business, or enterprise company, customs brokers use their expertise to help goods smoothly clear through customs in different countries. By optimizing the flow of shipments across borders, customs brokers reduce the stresses involved with international shipping for their clients.
What Does a Customs Broker Do?
Customs brokers serve the international trade community by handling the customs process for shipments, whether they go by air, ocean, or ground. These services include, but are not limited to:
Completing required documentation for export shipments
Every country around the world has different import and export regulations and procedures for different products, and these rules are always changing. Brokerage personnel are responsible for keeping up-to-date with new regulations so they can better advise their customers.
Along with being a wealth of specialized knowledge, customs brokers communicate with different agencies (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) and government officials (Transport Canada, Health Canada) as goods are being shipped to make sure the correct procedures are being followed. This not only helps ensure goods are cleared correctly and without delay, this saves clients from having to deal directly with customs officials.
Custom Broker Fees
In general, every customs broker sets their own service fees, depending on the specifics and complexities of different shipments. These fees can be based on a percentage of the total shipment value or even a flat rate. Requesting a quote from a customs broker will help you determine the costs for your specific shipments.
How to Choose a Customs Broker
In today’s ever-changing trade environment, it’s more important than ever to have experienced compliance professionals you can count on. Look for full-service, licensed customs broker companies that have the expertise to guide you through the complexities of importing and exporting.
In Canada, Canadian customs brokerage personnel are licensed by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA). These individuals are specially trained to make sure imports (for both companies and individuals) follow the strict, always changing guidelines set by the government. Likewise, for America, U.S. customs brokers are licensed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Using a brokerage company that provides integrated Canadian and U.S. brokerage solutions offers added efficiency and cost advantages for your supply chain needs.
Also, find a C-TPAT (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) certified customs broker. This means the broker is part of a U.S. border security program that works to protect international supply chains from terrorism and strengthen cargo security. Along with increasing safety, this helps your shipments move through the border quicker because the membership allows the customs clearance processes to go faster.
Do you need assistance importing or exporting goods? Carson International’s compliance experts are ready to help you with your unique business needs and guide you every step of the way. Get a quote for free.
The Trump administration is weighing whether to extend by one year some China tariff exclusions, a move that would offer some relief for U.S. businesses navigating the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The move would apply to some products excluded from the 25 percent tariffs that Trump imposed on Chinese goods in two initial batches: a list of $34 billion in products and $16 billion.
USTR asked for public comment on the idea before June 1. The trade agency said it would evaluate the exclusions, currently set to expire on July 9 and July 31, on a case-by-case basis, rather than approve an across-the-board extension. The focus of the evaluation will be “whether, despite the first imposition of these additional duties in July 2018, the particular product remains available only from China.” Additionally, the following issues should be addressed in submitting any comments:
Whether the particular product and/or a comparable product is available from sources in the United States and/or in third countries.
Any changes in the global supply chain since August 2018 as to the particular product or any other relevant industry developments.
The efforts, if any, the importers or U.S. purchasers have undertaken since August 2018 to source the product from the United States or third countries.
The USTR notes that it will continue to consider whether the imposition of additional duties on the products covered by the exclusion will result in severe economic harm to the commenter or other U.S. interests.
Those wishing to comment must do so electronically, preferably by completing the Exclusion Extension Comment Form, which has recently been revised into one form that combines the previously separate public and confidential forms. Fields on the form marked as Business Confidential Information (BCI) will not be publicly available when comments are posted on the docket (uploaded supporting documents can also be marked as public of BCI).
Comments will be accepted between May 1 and June 1, 2020. All submissions must be made electronically via the www.regulations.gov portal on Docket Number USTR-2020-0017 (List 1) or USTR-2020-0018 (List 2).
The United States is keeping Canada on its watch list of countries where policies and practices could pose a threat to American intellectual property rights.
In its annual report on foreign perils to American rights holders, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative is raising concerns about Canada’s plan to recalibrate how it calculates the price of prescription drugs.
The report stops short, however, of demands from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry that Canada be elevated to the USTR’s list of “priority” trouble spots.
The federal Liberal government announced last summer that the arm’s-length Patented Medicine Prices Review Board would stop using drug prices in the U.S. and Switzerland — among the highest in the world — to help it determine what Canadian patients should pay.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug-industry lobby group, says Canada’s plan would be a drag on efforts to develop new treatments and would end up devaluing American-made patented medications.
The USTR report out this week does acknowledge coming intellectual-property reforms in the new North American trade deal, CUSMA, but calls on Canada to “contribute fairly” to research and development for innovative medicines.
As international trade regulations often change, it’s important for businesses to be as prepared as they can be to keep their trade operations up-to-date and compliant. While it can be a challenge for businesses to keep up with the latest changes, a trade consultant can help.
What Is a Trade Consultant?
An international trade consultant can help companies get all of the answers they need regarding the potential changes in the future of foreign markets. A trade consultant helps you navigate import and export trade compliance regulations that can impact where you do business. A reputable trade advisor will help you establish and maintain trade compliance programs, support you during audits, recover duties and taxes (or help you avoid them), and even manage border security. Reliable consultants can provide advice and services around many different projects in several areas of trade including market research, human resources, engineering, corporate strategy, and IT, among others.
Similar to other types of consultants, trade consultants often have experience and skills that are vital for working with a variety of specialty clients. Consultants need to be effective communicators, have the ability to effectively and accurately analyze data and make realistic predictions for the results of a specific action, and be capable of identifying certain strengths among clients that can benefit them in the long run. International consulting contracts are used to govern the relationships between consultants and their clientele.
There are many services that a consultant can provide. Consultants may benefit clients in the following areas:
Monetary Recovery
Consultants can help companies make a swift monetary recovery from spending on international trade. Some of the services that consultants can offer in this area could include duty recovery and drawbacks, duty deferral assistance, and the identification of duty refund opportunities. In the process, companies can worry less about their finances.
Technical Services
A dependable consultant can also assist with the technical aspect of foreign trade. Services in the technical area include valuation services, tariff classification, voluntary disclosures, customized training, and advance customs rulings. All of these services help ensure that no technical element is overlooked and underutilized.
Compliance Process Reviews
If you want to make sure that you’re consistently compliant all along the supply chain, good consultants can conduct compliance process reviews that audit every aspect to maintain consistent compliance. Reviews may include customs compliance reviews, customs audit assistance, process and internal control design, and post-entry audit, all of which can eliminate any concerns around your adherence to industry regulations.
International Trade Agreements
When establishing and maintaining Preferential Trade Agreements, trade consultants can make sure the process goes smoothly. Consultants can help with everything from country origin determination and certificate of origin maintenance to free trade program compliance reviews, which will further ensure compliance across the supply chain.
With all services combined, a trade consultant can make sure a company has everything it needs to manage foreign trade and remain compliant.
Work with a Reputable Trade Consultant to Optimize Efficiency and Maintain Compliance
With all of the benefits that come with a good trade consultant, working with one can help keep all operations efficient and help alleviate any stress you might otherwise experience in the trade process. Trade consultants like Carson can give your business everything it needs with top-tier services that cover every element of international trade.
As COVID-19 continues to impact global economies, Resilience360, a cloud-based platform that helps companies to visualize, track and protect their business operations, recently released a series of reports that analyze key challenges that cross-border operators in Canada and the United States face.
With individual provinces and states largely in charge of deciding on issues relating to business closures and shelter-in-place advisories, Canada and the United States have been experiencing a somewhat patchwork approach to the pandemic. Business closures and shelter-in-place orders have impeded ground freight delivery schedules from an accessibility perspective, with restaurant and rest stop closures also impacting truck drivers.
An additional area of complexity lies with Mexico, having decided to close its factories as of March 30. Similarly to Canada and the United States, federal and state governments have not been on the same page in terms of determining how and when businesses should re-open.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has released a 10-point action plan to strengthen international trade and transportation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The policy brief acknowledges the need to mitigate the potentially crippling longer-term consequences of the pandemic, especially for the most vulnerable countries, while keeping ships moving, ports open, and cross-border transit trade flowing. Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies.
The 10 points in the action plan are as follows:
Ensure uninterrupted shipping
Maintain ports open
Protect international trade of critical goods and speed up customs clearance and trade facilitation
Facilitate cross-border transport
Ensure the right of transit
Safeguard transparency and up-to-date information
Go paperless
Address early on legal implications for commercial parties
Protect shippers and transport service providers alike
Prioritize technical assistance
International collaboration, coordination and solidarity among all is going to be key to overcoming this unprecedented global challenge, the brief states.
eCommerce shows no signs of slowing down, but despite the expectations for eCommerce service and the challenges of meeting them, many eCommerce companies neglect to utilize an effective transportation management system (TMS).
To adequately manage eCommerce logistics, shippers must have a good understanding of the specific challenges pertaining to eCommerce and do what they can to implement a reliable solution.
Pain Points That an eCommerce Company Faces
Many of the challenges that eCommerce companies face are similar to the pain points of traditional logistics. However, one of the biggest challenges that eCommerce companies have to overcome is the need for fast-paced shipping for order fulfillment and delivery. In today’s eCommerce environment, with services such as Amazon Prime that promise next-day or same-day shipping, customers have extraordinarily high expectations when it comes to quick service and shipping.
To help meet or even exceed their customers’ expectations, eCommerce businesses need to make sure that a system is in place to handle continuous orders as opposed to periodic batches.
5 Tips to Help Manage eCommerce Logistics
To meet the needs of consumers and maintain efficiency of operation, eCommerce companies should take these 5 steps.
1. Offer Several Options for Shipping
Today’s eCommerce customers expect to see multiple shipping options beyond standard shipping. While your business may be able to provide customers with next-day delivery and free shipping, offer the option of picking up in-store or delivering items to a third-party destination. People like the ability to fully customize their orders, down to the specific method of delivery.
2. Utilize All Shipping Options
In many cases, working with LTL shipments and traditional packages is sufficient, but as an eCommerce company, you should try to make use of several modes of transportation that can handle any type of order, regardless of its size or other specifications.
3. Use a TMS Designed for eCommerce
While it can be beneficial to have any type of transportation management system (TMS) in place to manage operations, eCommerce has specific requirements to meet growing demands. Shippers may want to incorporate solutions specifically intended for eCommerce, which can help with decision-making and order management while helping reduce overall costs.
4. Make Sure All Supply Chain Elements Are Connected
Organizational silos are simply obsolete when it comes to eCommerce logistics. With ever-changing demand and order fulfillment needs, it’s important for every part of the supply chain to be connected for optimal control. Streamlining your supply chain, including the acquisition of materials from vendors, will improve management and help ensure customer satisfaction.
5. Maximize Transparency of Operations
People want to know where their orders are from the time they order all the way up to the moment they receive them. While shippers may encounter certain issues when shipping products, including inclement weather, they can do what they can to reroute any shipments and let customers know when their orders will arrive.
Dependable eCommerce Logistics Services
If you’re in need of an eCommerce logistics management solution you can trust, Carson has everything you need to optimize your operations in Canada and the U.S.
Our eCommerce services can help reduce retailers’ tax burden while maintaining regulatory compliance with Customs. If you want to give your customers what they want when they expect it, Carson can help you keep your customers happy with our innovative eCommerce logistics management solution.
