Foreign-Trade Zones Board September 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

Based on comments received in response to the May 8, 2008, notice (73 FR 26077-26078), the Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZ) Board staff is making a number of revisions to its proposal to make available an alternative framework (for grantees that choose to participate) to designate and manage their general-purpose FTZ sites. Comments on the May proposal were overwhelmingly supportive overall with regard to making such a framework available to grantees on an optional basis. However, comments also raised a number of important questions and concerns. In response, we have made some significant revisions to the proposal. Key revisions are allowance for a special transitional phase for each grantee applying to transfer to the alternative framework, elimination of a general initial limit on the number of ``usage- driven'' (formerly ``user-driven'') sites, elimination of the concept of an ``anchor'' site, and flexibility on the duration of the sunset limits for ``magnet'' siteswith five years established as a minimum rather than a fixed standardso that the FTZ Board may take specific circumstances into account. Comments and questions are summarized and addressed below by general topic. The revised proposal is delineated after the discussion of the comments/questions.