US importers and exporters alike have been attempting to cope with the impact of the findings of the Section 301 investigation against China which have led to the imposition of additional duties of

As published on the USTR’s website on July 6^th, exclusions can be requested from Section 301 duties. If approved, the exclusions will be retroactive to July 6^th and valid for a year from the date of approval. The process, as laid out by the USTR, requires:

• The public will have 90 days to file a request for a product exclusion; the request period will end on October 9, 2018.
• Following public posting of the filed request on Regulations.gov, the public will have 14 days to file responses to the request for product exclusion.  After the close of the 14 day response period, interested persons will have an additional 7 days to reply to any responses received in support of or opposition to the request.

Unlike scope rulings in antidumping cases or binding rulings from CBP, the provision of an exclusion is tied to the product, not to the requestor, so if an exclusion is issued for a particular HTS number, all importers can claim it.

The full details of requesting an exclusion have now been published in the Federal Register. A word of caution, however – is that while the process may seem easy, they will likely not easily be granted and will require a comprehensive case to be made. We strongly suggest that if your company is contemplating requesting an exclusion that you contact your RIM representative for more information.