Office of Insular Affairs – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Departments of Commerce and the Interior (the Departments) amend their regulations governing watch duty-exemption allocations and the watch and jewelry duty-refund benefits for producers in the United States insular possessions (the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). The rule amends the regulations by making technical changes required by passage of the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2004; extending the duty refund benefits to include the value of usual and customary health insurance, life insurance and pension benefits; raising the ceiling on the amount of jewelry that qualifies for the duty refund benefit; allowing new insular jewelry producers to assemble jewelry and have such jewelry treated as an article of the insular possessions for up to 18 months after the jewelry company commences assembly operations; allowing duty refund certificate holders to secure a duty refund on any articles that are imported into the customs territory of the United States by the certificate holder duty paid; providing a more comprehensive definition of ``unit;'' adjusting the amount of watch repairs that are eligible for the duty refund; providing compensation to insular watch producers if tariffs on watches and watch movements are reduced; and clarifying which wages are eligible for purposes of determining the duty refund and identifying which records are needed for the audit.