Tax & Trade Blog

Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) resets its “audit priority areas” twice per year. Essentially, CBSA designates certain tariff classification codes as CBSA’s priority areas for customs verifications (i.e., “audits”), which is based on the program areas which CBSA believes pose significant risk for import non-compliance in tariff classification, valuation, and origin of goods.

CBSA has now released its January 2023 Trade Compliance Verification priorities, setting the stage for the next six (6) months. As is often the case, most of the focus is on tariff classification!

Are you a U.S. based business distributing goods in Canada?

If you have over $20 M in assets or $40 M in revenues, you are likely caught by Canada’s new “child and forced labour” rules and need to deal with this or risk $250,000 in fines!

If that is concerning, keep reading!

On January 16, 2022, the Canadian Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) issued a notice that it will be conducting a re-investigation in respect of corrosion-resistant steel sheet (“COR (II)”) imported from Turkey and Vietnam (the “Listed Countries”). CBSA has issued a Request for Information (“RFI”) to both exporters and importers, and responses are due February 22, 2023!

Normal values established during the re-investigation will be effective as of the end date of the re-investigation, and all normal values currently in place will expire on that date.

The third and final phase of the Canada Border Services Agency’s (“CBSA”) Assessment and Revenue Management (“CARM”) project (i.e., “CARM R2”) now has a clear target date for release – October 2023! The exact implementation date will depend on when draft regulations, released on November 26, 2022, will be finalized. Importers, brokers, freight-forwarders, and anyone else interested in CARM has until January 10, 2023 to provide feedback on the regulations!

The draft regulations will tweak existing regulations to bring them in-line with how the CBSA envisages CARM applying in practice. Hopefully, this will take Canadian customs into the digital age more smoothly than some other recent Federal IT projects!

On December 29, 2022, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (“CITT”) released an Order continuing the CITT’s original 2012 finding that the dumping and subsidizing of oil country tubular good pup joints (“pup joints) originating in or exported from China was threatening to cause injury to Canadian domestic injury.

The Order effectively means that the current anti-dumping duties (“ADDs”) of up to 173.4% and countervailing duties (“CVDs”) of 9,125.6 Renminbi per metric tonne will remain in place for Subject Goods originating in or exported from China.