U.S. Customs and Border Protection May 27, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This document adopts as a final rule, with some changes, interim amendments to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations which were published in the Federal Register on October 5, 2000, as T.D. 00-67, and later amended by T.D. 03-15 published in the Federal Register on March 21, 2003, to implement the trade benefit provisions for sub-Saharan Africa contained in Title I of the Trade and Development Act of 2000, as amended. The trade benefits under Title I, also referred to as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), apply to sub-Saharan African countries designated by the President and involve: The extension of duty-free treatment under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) to non-textile articles normally excluded from GSP duty-free treatment that are not import-sensitive; and the entry of specific textile and apparel articles free of duty and free of any quantitative limits. The regulatory amendments adopted as a final rule in this document reflect and clarify the statutory standards for preferential tariff treatment under the AGOA, as amended by section 3108 of the Trade Act of 2002 and include other amendments necessitated by passage of the AGOA Acceleration Act of 2004 and the Africa Investment Incentive Act of 2006. This final rule includes specific documentary, procedural and other related requirements that must be met in order to obtain preferential treatment. This document also adopts as a final rule interim amendments to the CBP regulations implementing the GSP which were included in T.D. 00-67 to conform those regulations to previous amendments to the GSP statute. Moreover, this document adopts as a final rule other changes to the AGOA implementing regulations made by T.D. 03-15 to clarify several issues that arose after their original publication.