Trade policy is changing rapidly – Pay for your business

Trade policies are shifting faster than ever before, with new tariffs, complex regulations and serious enforcement measures that affect businesses across the industry. If you are an importer, staying ahead of these changes is essential to maintaining a smooth operation and avoiding financial setbacks.

With trade policies constantly changing, it’s time to review compliance strategies, reassess tariff exposures and ensure your business is ready for what’s going on, and it’s time to ensure you maintain a solid foundation.

Review your business before CBP

Auditing your business to check import compliance is an important step to avoid expensive fines, block supply chain disruptions, and minimize legal risks. Audits help identify potential compliance gaps to ensure that your existing business practices comply with all applicable regulations. It also allows businesses to proactively resolve issues before upgrading.

Import Report Card

Diaz Trade Act can provide custom ACE report cards to outline your import compliance. The report contains a summary of your import transactions and identifies potential issues in the business process as well as substantive recommendations to ensure compliance. The report provides similar information:

• Your last 5 years of import history
• The HTS manifest you are using
• Total amount paid by AD/CVD
• Manufacturer ID reports to customs
• Reports are inconsistent
• Total value of imports and duties paid annually
• Review the country of origin of your imported goods
• Use of free trade agreements
• Your Guarantor, Bond Coverage and Bond Type
• And more!

Finally, the transcript service includes one-hour reporting and one-hour reporting with customs and trade law experts on findings and recommendations.

Before comply – plan immediately or pay later

Many people mistakenly believe that the ease of import means that the importing country has no responsibility or obligation. Whether your company is a newbie to imports or has been in business for many years, CBP wants importers to use “reasonable care” to ensure compliance with relevant rules and regulations.

Reasonable care requires importers to use themselves as reasonable importers when importing goods to the United States.

Reasonable care needs importers:

• Meet the criteria for input, classification and determination of the value of imported goods
• Provide other necessary information to help CBP correctly evaluate responsibilities and collect accurate statistics
• Determine whether other applicable legal standards and requirements are met

Diaz Trade Law has extensive experience in a wide range of trade compliance matters, including helping companies customize their own import compliance plans. The program may require the development of import compliance documents, ongoing training for various departments of your business, regular internal audits, record keeping and more. Such a program can not only help you avoid penalties and potential criminal liability, but it can also help you in the mitigation process as it detects violations. Remember that just because your goods have been allowed to enter the United States in the past does not mean that these imports are compliant, or that customs will never perform the additional duties of these entries.

Minimize tariffs

The increase in tariffs has a significant impact on businesses participating in importing goods to the United States, but importers are not without options. How many are there Legal Methods to reduce tariff costs include:

• Temporary imports under the bond (TIB)
• Stay still
• Disadvantages of duty
• Tariff project
• Country of origin changes
• First sale
• Duty delay
• Free Trade Agreement
• Transfer some manufacturing to the United States

Importers exploring options to minimize tariff liability should always work with experts to ensure they comply with all U.S. customs regulations before making any changes. Even if it is unintentional, evading duties is a serious matter, and in the case of fraud can result in huge fines and may even lead to fines.

Customs attorneys can help you prepare and adapt

Diaz Trade Law has extensive experience in a wide range of trade compliance matters and can help your business navigate changing trade policies. From evaluating your existing practices to building a compliance program from scratch, we can help. Contact us at info@diaztradelaw.com or call us at 305-456-3830.

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