The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on Friday afternoon published details on how companies and the general public can go about getting certain products excluded from the long list of Chinese goods now subject to additional import duties.
Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump’s administration and Beijing fired the first volleys in a trade war that has been brewing for months, each officially adopting an additional 25 percent tariff on $34 billion in imports from the other country.
Because the U.S. import tariffs already have been subject to a public comment period, USTR said it would now consider public requests “to address situations that warrant excluding a particular product within a subheading, but not the tariff subheading as a whole.” In other words, USTR will consider exclusions for specific goods, but not the broader category under which those products fall.
Those looking to get their imported goods excluded from the tariff list will have until Oct. 9 to file a request, after which the public will have 14 days to file responses to the request and interested persons will have an additional seven days to reply to any such responses.
If USTR deems a product worthy of exclusion, those exclusions will be effective for one year and will apply retroactively to July 6.
The office said it will weigh multiple factors in determining whether a given product should be excluded from the tariff list, including “whether a product is available from a source outside of China, whether the additional duties would cause severe economic harm to the requestor or other U.S. interests and whether the particular product is strategically important or related to Chinese industrial programs including ‘Made in China 2025.’”
All submissions for product exclusions must be made electronically via Regulations.gov, USTR said. More details on the submission process may be found on the USTR website and will be published this week in the Federal Register.