On February 24, 2016, President Obama signed the customs reauthorization bill into law. This bill is a broad reauthorization that includes many provisions on trade facilitation and enforcement, import safety, intellectual property rights protection, drawback, trade partnership programs, and many other topics. The following are some highlights of portions of the Law.As of March 11, the value of goods that may be imported by one person on one day free of duty and tax will be increased from $200 to $800.

Effective April 25, HTSUS Chapter 9801 will be amended to allow for duty-free returns of previously exported non-U.S. goods and HTSUS Chapter 9802 related to articles exported and returned, or advanced or improved abroad, will be modified.

Effective Aug. 23, CBP will be required to investigate allegations of antidumping and countervailing duty evasion according to specified procedures.

CBP must work with the private sector to (a) ensure that agency partnership program participants receive commercially significant and measurable trade benefits and (b) improve its ability to classify and appraise imported goods, improve trade enforcement efforts and further facilitate trade.

As of Feb. 24, 2018, numerous changes will be made to simplify drawback law, including standardizing the time frames for filing drawback and modernizing the claimant recordkeeping requirements.

The Dec. 31, 2016, deadline for use of the International Trade Data System as the primary means of receiving documentation required for the release of imported cargo and clearance of cargo for export is codified.The full article may be found here.