updates have happened in the U.S. Customs market. Interesting, I think it's always funny to know that we work on this content, obviously well in advance, and then things happen within hours or the night before, as they often do here lately with customs. We've got some very fresh updates to bring you here in just a moment. Really quick, my name is Samantha Hurst. I am one of our marketing and bid managers for the Americas region. I introduce myself just to remind you, if you have any technical issues or questions about the webinar, admin-wise, you are welcome to email me directly from the confirmation email that you received when you registered. That's my job here is just to support here in the background while our experts give you all the valuable content.
The first thing I just want to mention is if you are unfortunately hearing my voice echo, just make sure that you are joining the audio only from one device. That is typically the issue we see people having, and we don't want to drive you crazy with mine or the speakers' voices echoing in your ear. A question that we get every single webinar is, how do I get these slides? That's one of the many questions that come through. We will send an email to you within about an hour or two of today's webinar wrapping up, and that will allow you to access the materials. It will include the recording, the presentation deck, and the Q&A, as well as any additional links that we feel would be valuable to you.
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You can get those invites direct to your inbox just by scanning this QR code. Or in the chat, I did drop a couple of pieces of information related to these updates, and you can click on that link there that we've dropped as well. Now I'm going to move on to just a quick disclaimer. This is less fun. But just to remind you, we are not, neither are any of the experts today, legal experts. We are presenting all of this content for your educational benefit, and we will even share a certificate of completion at the end that you can use for actual credits if you are maintaining a certification.
But again, this is really just for informational purposes, and we pull a lot of this information from the public domain and are simply trying to give you our best viewpoint on how to manage all these changes. Now, let's get on to introducing our speakers. I'm really excited because you're going to see one super familiar face in Stephanie Holloway, our Director of Customs Operations. But today, we have a couple of other faces. Some are familiar. Actually, I guess all three of these ladies are familiar. They've supported other webinars before, but we really appreciate them jumping in today. We have Courtney Peterson, who's our Senior Manager of Customs for the Americas, Sila Barr, who's our Manager of U.S. Customs Compliance, and Ashley Lara, who's our Manager of Customs Brokerage, Houston. So thank you all so much for joining.
I'm going to pass it off to Courtney, who's going to get us started. Actually, Courtney, if you will pause one moment, I did not hit record. I don't want to miss all of this good content. So one second, and we will be good to go. Okay. Now, Courtney, please take us away. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Samantha. I appreciate it. Thanks everybody for joining us. We're going to talk about some great topics. I know I'm biased because I'm part of this webinar. But we've got some great trade developments plus some bonus content that's not listed here that I'm excited to talk to you about. There's some ongoing legal challenges, things that are coming up. I'm super excited to share with you guys our takeaways from the Trade and Cargo Security Summit that we had, that we attended. Ashley's going to give an update on that, and enforcement and compliance trends from Sila. So super excited. Let's get into it. Yeah, this slide should be familiar to you if you've joined our webinars in the past. The main thing I wanted to cover here is that there's a brand new trade remedy in the toolbox, so you can say.
So familiar with these four on the left, but there's 338 brand new on the far right. What I want you to take away from here is that things come on quickly, kind of out of the blue. For 338 specifically, it's interesting because this section came out of nowhere and then is actually only valid a little bit later. They set the actual implementation date a month ahead in advance. What we've seen from the current administration is that either they go in immediately, yesterday, in three hours, or they give a lot of breathing room for them to actually implement. When that happens, it's mostly trying to get people. It's a tactic to get people to come to the negotiation table, right? That's what's unique about those. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they get negotiated out in the final hour.
We can just keep our fingers crossed that maybe some negotiations will go down with Canada. Also, these are governed by the USITC , and they've posted a comment period. Hopefully, it's about what does discrimination mean under Section 338. This is just the new crossroads of a brand new trade basis that the administration is trying to implement tariffs under. It's going to come with a whole new set of legal challenges. Section 338, we were kind of hoping that it wasn't going to happen. But here we are. This is one of those ones that it had a further implementation, and now we are seeing very, very high rates be implemented. We've seen even higher from China. The main thing I want to talk about here is tariffs, kind of old news.
We always know that there's lists, there's things that are happening. I want you to remember that even though the proclamation says alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motor vehicles, that does not reflect the products that are covered. These are actions meant to combat their treatment of alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motor vehicles. The products covered are all not under those topics. Please check the list, please check the provisions, check your products against those, because it's not just those three product categories. I also wanted to make sure I call out that the scope had changed. We had additional proclamations that came out, two of them. It covered alcoholic beverages and motor vehicles that added, removed, and modified some HTS numbers underneath those actions. Please know that the lists have changed from when they were originally announced back in August.
But the main thing I wanted you to take away from this are the import bans. We've seen a lot of tariffs. We've seen very, very high rates, but we've never seen an outright ban. I think this is something that we should all pay very close attention to and recognize what it means for the implementation of 338. 338 is not just tariffs, it's also outright banning products. It's indicative of the lengths that the administration is willing to go to for this and any future trade remedy actions. I think that is something that is very notable and we should be cognizant of as we move forward. Another thing I wanted to mention for Section 338 is the difference between the language that it's used for the tariff, the actual tariffs, the 50% is entered for consumption or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption.
Very entry based. The import bans are actually more about the date of importation. Goods imported on or after. We're interpreting this to mean it's not necessarily that you have to make entry on those goods. The goods just have to be in the country. The options that I wanted to highlight before their ban goes in on 29th of September are you can just do the usual, bring your goods in, clear the goods, and you're home free. But if you're trying to beat the deadline, if you're trying to get these things in before September 29, before the import ban is actually implemented, and doing an entry on all of those goods, trying to push them all through at the same time is prohibitive because of the duties.
You can also explore FTZ admissions. It doesn't exempt you from the duties, but it does put off that duty payment. You could do an admission to get all those goods into an FTZ and only pay the duties as you pull it out of the zone. You could mitigate or put off that duty payment using an FTZ and in-bond warehousing. If you enter your goods into an in-bond warehouse, you can also gamble that that duty rate will be set when you remove it from the warehouse. You can also see if maybe that 50% rate will move or change. It reminds me of the IEEPA China situation from way back when a lot of importers were gambling, I'll say gambling, that the duties wouldn't stick at 125%.
A lot of importers were letting goods sit at the port. They were just trying to move things in bond, give themselves more time, so that way when they finally did the entry, that the duty rate would be lower. Of course, this is complicated because this is Canada, and the transit time is much shorter than something from China. But something that we wanted to call out and something to keep in mind. My next topic is CBP Form 5106. If you're not familiar with the 5106, it is the form that you use to update your contact information as an importer of record for CBP. If your company is the importer of record on your entries, you need to make sure that the records that CBP has on their side are accurate and complete.
That's the primary thing I want you to think about before you listen to the rest of this, because the manufacturer, exporter, seller, importer of record, they're not necessarily the same company. You need to determine if you are the importer of record. I also wanted to call out that before, a 5106 was kind of administrative. It was very easy. Brokers would just submit them on behalf of you. It's just name, address, phone number, just standard stuff. But with the release of this enforcement EO, there is a significantly higher burden being placed on anyone that is submitting this information on behalf of an importer. It comes with additional vetting and verification.
I, as a broker, am saying, "I verify that this importer is actually named this and is at this address, and this is their current contact information." We've never had to do that before. That being said, the best way that you can update your 5106 information is directly in the ACE Portal. You can see what's in there, you can monitor it, and you can correct anything that might be incorrect. The downside of this is CBP can void an importer number if your 5106 information is inaccurate or incomplete. I beg you to please make sure that information is correct. The last thing you want is notification that your importer number is voided and you cannot make entry in your stuff for any entries that you have left to file. You won't be able to file them.
That would be terrible, and I don't want that for you just because an address is outdated because your office moved. Please go into the portal, review and correct any information, and use that as a tool to go forward. We also sent out a job aid. Hopefully, you received the job aid. I have a screenshot of it on the next slide. That will help you identify the fields that you need to make sure are updated and accurate. The ACE Portal's kind of wild. There's a bunch of different ways, and they say the similar things or the same things.
If you didn't get this email, if you didn't get this job aid and you're interested in it, please reach out to your local Expeditors contact, and they can get you this job aid to help you go through ACE to update your contact information. Okay, transitioning back into tariffs is the new Russian sanctions. We've seen this before, where it's 100% tariffs on goods from countries that purchase Russian crude oil or natural gas, and is one of either the five largest purchasers of Russian crude oil or one of the five leading facilitators of Russian oil sanctions evasion. We've seen this kind of secondary tariffs before, under the IEEPA duties for Russian oil for India.
This is something to keep in mind that although it does have 500% tariffs on imports of Russian origin goods, and there are some exemptions, the piece of this that's going to be hard to track down is this up to 100% tariffs on goods from countries that purchase. You are going to have to go through your sourcing, identify countries that could fall within one of either of the two, five largest purchasers by country or five leading facilitators of Russian oil sanctions evasion. We have not received any actual implementation instructions. We haven't received any information regarding affected countries. The best thing you can do right now is guess. Google it. I'm sure you've Googled it. I've Googled it. Look at the countries that come up in those kind of conversations, and just gut check your potential impact.
Make a quick pass in your sourcing and see if you have things from those countries, and just plan on that. That's the best thing you can do right now. Just remember that it's not just Russian origin. That's not going to be what you do to figure out your impact. It's going to be those additional countries that deal often with Russia. My last bonus slide is last night, we've got a new FRN in draft status for the Section 232 pharma. The main thing I want you to take away from here is that 232 continues to evolve. It's not a one and done. It's not like the thing comes out, you get an FRN, a CSMS, and this is your life now.
What we're seeing more and more now is, there's changes, there's updates, now there's exclusions, now there's a comment period, and there's so many things rolling. For this pharma new FRN that came out last night, they identified some zero rate categories. There are specialty products, really specific definitions that are in there that I encourage you to go read for yourself. But these qualify for a 0% Section 232 rate for pharma, but it needs to be from an eligible jurisdiction. You can see at the bottom of the slide, there's all of the countries that are eligible.
If you have a product that is a zero rate category or even another highly specialized pharmaceutical product that is either not from one of the eligible jurisdictions or not included, they do have another path that you can take if your product is meeting a urgent U.S. health need. You can apply to Commerce for approval for that 0% rate. There's some information that you need to include in your request to BIS. They've said in the FRN, and they've been very specific, that the decisions are going to be individual, fact-specific, and company-specific. It's not going to be like the 232 cases where you can kind of, someone else applies for a product exclusion, you're like, "Ooh, I have that same product. I'll use that same exclusion." Unfortunately, not the case.
Every single company that is producing a product needs to apply for that individual specific product. They will be notified if they are approved, and then you can start using that exclusion. Also included in the FRN are some HTS changes. There's the additional zero rate header. They updated some definitions for pharmaceutical and generic pharmaceutical articles. Before you freak out, the HTS changes are not general. They are specifically to address the statistical changes from July 1st. This is the first 232 that we've seen that takes a specific HTS change and actually has implemented these changes into their list. There's also some other technical amendments that they did, which I think are just maybe mistakes, maybe things that they didn't intend on the original list and not realizing that coverage. But this is the first 232 that has addressed these statistical changes.
Most of the other ones are just saying if it's split, it applies to both. I think that's very interesting that they're reviewing that from July. The main thing I want to address with this 232 pharma is, again, 232 program continues to evolve. It does not just stay. This is not the final word. We're going to hear about 232 pharma again, I'm sure. There's lots of questions still out there. We'll look forward to keeping up with all of those. I think that's it for current trade trends.
I'll kick it over to Stephanie for the legal battles that are going on.
That was quite the transition. Let me see here. Okay. Tariffs under legal challenge, or as Courtney said, legal battles. Let's dig through this a little bit. This section, obviously, our colleague Ted always does, and I appreciate him for doing that because I don't like talking about the legal system. I feel so ill-equipped. A couple of months ago, somebody put a question in the box saying, "Most of us aren't lawyers. How are we supposed to understand any of this?" I felt that deeply. Regardless of how we feel about the legal system, or lawyers, I guess, we all have to pay attention to this. We all have to kind of keep our finger on the pulse because it is such a game changer, as we saw with IEEPA. Most of my updates today are referring to IEEPA.
I kind of feel like this is one of those things where it's like, "Nobody cares. Move on." But there was some stuff that came out in the last month that I want to make sure, for some of you, it will be very impactful, and for the rest of us, of course. This might be just IEEPA, you got duties back on, but as we know, there's a lot of other legal challenges going on with Section 122, potentially at some point, or Section 301, forced labor, maybe Section 338. I don't know. This is why we really have to pay attention to this. With that said, for IEEPA, one of the best places to look is at the filings that U.S. Customs does. Brandon Lord files most of those, and he just filed one exactly. Well, probably him not personally, but he signs off on them.
A week ago, there was one filed in the Court of International Trade. I have a link here, and they kind of gave an update, and it was a little bit interesting. You can see here, this is the jump in entry. It went from 17 million, what, a month ago, to 27 million. I actually had to go refresh my brain. It's, I think, 55 million entries that needed refunds. They're about halfway through the count. But then they have given back $134 billion, and that's out of $166 billion, so they're about 80% the way through the actual dollar figure. Okay? Not super shocking. They've given back 50% of the entries, but 80% of the value.
An interesting thing he had in there, of course, was that $1.3 billion has not been sent to Treasury because there's not a U.S. bank account associated with that refund. It kind of just gets into a holding pattern. Okay? If you think that you should have a refund but you haven't gotten it yet, this might be one of the reasons why. Also in that report, Brandon Lord called out CAPE Phase 3. Okay? CAPE Phase 3 has some major nuances to it, so I'm going to get a little in the weeds here. If you have gotten all your IEEPA money back, then you can just put your head down and take a little break for a second. But if you haven't, or you are waiting on phase III, let's unpack this real quick.
So phase III is going to cover something called finally liquidated entries. Finally liquidated entries, unfortunately, I'm going to go over to this crazy chart, is after liquidation occurs. We have our entry filed. There's roughly 314 days. At that point, you can make updates to it, typically through a post summary corrections called a PSC. At 314 days, liquidation occurs. As I always say, the book kind of gets closed. Then there's 180 days post-liquidation where you can make changes, traditionally. Most of the time, you're going to be doing a protest if you owe CBP more money. What we have learned through this process is that CBP views the first 90 days after that liquidation a date fine, and they are processing those entries through CAPE, and they have no problems doing so.
There's the second bucket that's between 90 and 180 days post-liquidation date that they deem with this term finally liquidated, and that bucket is stuff within 90 to 180 days. What CBP is saying, or what they have argued, is that if you're in the finally liquidated bucket, they can only give a refund to you if it has been ordered by the Court of International Trade, and you need to be a plaintiff. Essentially, you need to have filed in the Court of International Trade. You have to be suing the government to get this money back. So what's a little bit tricky is that Customs has been saying, "Hey, we're prepping phase III," but at the same time, arguing against having to give all that money back.
Judge Eaton at the Court of International Trade has said all the money needs to go back regardless of what state it is in. So that's the newest court kind of battle. So this is a battle. Courtney was right. What's happening on October 6th, that was hard for me, is that if you had filed in the Court of International Trade prior to July 30th, you can request your money on the finally liquidated entry starting October 6th. Hopefully, you all followed that. So if you do not have a court order, and you have not filed suit, this will not apply to you. You have to be in the court. And your lawyer that has filed, I've heard from some of our importers, CIT is in active conversation with them.
You should definitely know what's going on and if you're in this bucket. So, that is good news for a number of these folks, but obviously the eligibility, the big piece on this, is that phase III is not open to everybody. It is open to this very select group of importers who already had filed in CIT, and their lawyers have worked with CIT and CBP to get these entries prepped and ready to go, and they can file them on October 6th. With that said, there are some of you who are like, "Ooh, maybe I should file." And I do think that is probably the fastest way to get your money back. But before you go down this road, I would absolutely say, first of all, quantify. How much money do you have? How much refunds do you have falling into that finally liquidated bucket?
Okay? Then really try to understand, some of you are saying, "Hey, it is just a couple of entries. It is not worth it. We do not want to pay for the lawyer fee for that." That is fine. What you can do, though, is still try to preserve your right a bit, and that is really where the cheapest insurance policy you can get yourself is a protest. Because what we are trying to do is buy enough time while this decision works itself back through the courts. Okay? So the decision being, can importers get their refund if they do not have a filing in the CIT? What a mess, right? The other big thing is, if you have, this is once again, not a lawyer, but I believe you have a two-year CIT filing deadline. And we are actually coming up on that.
It is two years, I think, from the date of injury. Most of you had started to pay IEEPA China Fentanyl in the beginning of February 2025. We are actually not that many months out. This is something that, first of all, quantify it, figure out how much you have, and then you can actually make a strategy from there, keeping these other things in mind. Okay, I think we have had enough fun with that topic. Let us talk a little bit about on the horizon. I only have one slide in here. Actually, let me flip back real quick. One thing of course, many of us are watching, is that China is, of course, going to be at the White House, I think, today. And they will be doing a more formal dinner.
I think many of us are keeping our eye on that, as China has traditionally been a very important partner to the United States, and the amount of goods that we import from there. From what I have read, and you can read what you want to, it does not seem like maybe a lot of tariff activity will come out. But just thinking about it, there is still so much on the table. One of the strategies of the Trump administration often is to kick the can down the road, and we actually have a number of tariffs that have been kicked. That sounds weird. But we have a number of tariffs that have been moved out that are specifically related to China. We have the Section 301 maritime. We have an open Section 301 on did China fulfill its phase, what is it called? Phase I commitments.
We have the open Section 301 on structural excess capacity. There is a number of ones. In the Russian sanctions bill, honestly too, I think China is one that many people agree is a large buyer of Russian oil. There is many things out there that can kind of be used and leveraged for additional tariffs on China as desired. We will watch, we will see what happens, of course, with the rest of the world, and then report as it actually becomes more impactful. With that said, let us talk briefly about the FCC. There was a pretty key comment period that actually just closed yesterday. And what this was looking at is the FCC is looking at different types of imports. I think in July, they actually did. I should not say this out loud because I am going to mess it up.
It was an import ban on robotics and one other thing that is going out of my head. They are making more moves in this space, and this is really looking at restrictions affecting equipment, covering certain components and software. These are things like routers, things with a radio signal. And the list is pretty extensive. This comment period was open. It just got closed, so it will be very interesting to kind of see what shakes out of this. Similar to what Courtney was kind of alluding to on the Section 338, these are more restrictions than what we have traditionally seen in the last 18 months. In the last 18 months, it has been a lot of just more tariffs, right? And if you can pay it still can come.
This could fundamentally change that as well or require more restrictions or more data or things that you might have to provide ahead of time to the FCC . This is something that we are really keeping our eye on. Just for fun, if you want, you can go out there. I have the link here to where the docket is, and you can see things that people submitted and their comments. And there are companies that have submitted, there is everyday citizens. It is just the government in action. With that said, that is a great transition.
I am going to ask Ashley to come on. She attended with Madeline and Kelsey from my team in person to the CBP Trade and Cargo Security Summit two weeks ago, I think, in Dallas. She will walk us through what she heard, and what you should all be aware of if you did not have a chance to attend.
Hello. Can you all hear me?
Yes, we can hear you, but I can't see you, actually.
I don't know why you can't see me. I don't know why the video is choosing this moment in time to choose violence. Let's see. Well, how about that? Cool.
Yes, here you are. [crosstalk].
Yes. All right, we did it.
How exciting. Okay.
So exciting. All right. Thank you guys. Yes, I was fortunate enough to attend CBP's, they have an annual Trade and Cargo Security Summit. They do it every year. This year it was in Dallas. I was fortunate enough to go alongside Madeline and Kelsey, you guys know those names, and then a few other colleagues from our Texas districts. Then, of course, I know many of you were there as well, so it's great to see some of you in person. This slide really should articulate some of the vibes and overall what we heard from CBP. Generally speaking, know your supply chain and what does that mean? Tier 1 is no longer enough. So how are you making sure that you kind of explore past Tier 1, going to that additional Tier 2, Tier 3 supplier points?
There was certainly an overall air of enforcement. They spoke a lot about being ready for more inquiries and more direct engagement from the regulatory agencies with the trade. They are definitely using a lot more data, AI. The ability of AI has really given them, they are able to use all of the data from all of the sources all of the time. They were very clear that they are doing so in these efforts. So be ready to prove origin was another kind of key takeaway. CBP is using all of the data that they have collected, and they have spent the last several years really getting good at this and leveraging that historical data, along with what is possible out of countries. Is the country of origin that is being claimed possible for the manufacturing capabilities? Is it probable? Those types of things.
Then be ready for a direct CBP contact. They are actually expecting importers to be able to engage directly with customs. So making sure you have access to your ACE Portal is a great starting point there. And being ready to provide documents or answer questions, having a general plan there, who is going to answer those inquiries, et cetera. That was the overall from overall vibes. So what are they testing? Again, very broad discussions from them. Very broad assertions and discussions that importers should be able to use data, AI tools, historical data sources, Google. They gave a lot of examples about literally googling locations or looking at Street View or those types of things. It seemed simplistic when they spoke about it, but really being able to connect all of those endpoints through your supply chain.
Do you have the records to back up where this manufacturing took place, et cetera? I know this seems super hard, insurmountable, almost impossible, right? I guess we would encourage, don't wait until you get a CF-28 or 29 to start looking at this. Maybe start with one part, one supplier. Could you try to gather a document package, or could you try to gather backup, as it were, to support the country of origin that was used? Could you gather support or input for the Tier 2 inputs? Do you know what that next level is beyond who you purchased the goods from? As you're thinking about that, what information do you already have within your organization, and how can you tap into it?
There are other departments that might be involved in the onboarding of a vendor, maybe due diligence or designing of a product, maybe engineering groups, and maybe some of those efforts overlap with some of what you're trying to prove out. It's definitely well recognized that connecting all of these pieces of the process and maintaining and having access to all of those records, that's a big, tall task. The encouragement here would be give it a shot. Try to trace back one product. Maybe start with your biggest product or your largest by value, something like that, to see what could you come up with and where would you struggle. AI. It was a technology summit, so customs and AI technology as a whole were hot topics of conversation. CBP talked a bit about how they themselves are leveraging AI.
Definitely seeing, again, they have the ability to review so much more data, larger numbers of entries, being able to compare that data across ports, across different centers of excellence. No longer having kind of that human labor element to limit what they can look at and the breadth of what they can look at. So definitely seeing CBP having AI incorporated into those types of things, and then triage up or distill up to those humans a almost complete audit package or more substantial information in there. Now it's not a CBP officer looking at that first level. Maybe they've used some tools that have already given them country-specific or manufacturer-specific data historically or whatnot to help them make a determination on whether or not a CF-28 or 29 or further information is required.
They're using AI a lot in those spaces, and also then the initial generation and population, I think, of some of those documents, which I'm sure several of you have seen, as that enforcement has ramped up. What does that mean for you? How do importers get involved? Lots of people are talking about embedding AI in every part of day-to-day work, your personal lives. We certainly don't encourage Customs is a very knowledge-based area, entry writing itself, and compliance as well. You would want always to have a human actually reviewing data, especially if we're talking about response to a CF-28 or 29. But kind of an idea, what if in your previous exercise, you're trying to prove out origin on your items, throw it all into AI.
Does what you're providing make sense? Does it tell the story? Does it actually convey and answer the questions that Customs is asking? Can you walk through that transaction, maybe talking to the AI and say, "Hey, I'm trying to prove the country of origin for this. Here are the documents I have." Could you use it in those types of ways? Think about that as well as you're, I'm sure, getting lots of pressure from all sorts of areas to use AI and how that could actually help in the regulatory space.
I'm going to turn it over to Sila now to talk about enforcement and compliance trends.
Thanks so much, Ashley. Wow, we're really bringing the hits today, huh, guys? We got a lot going on. Okay, let's talk about the Customs Enforcement Executive Order. This was published back in June. We've already been talking about it for a few months, but we're going to keep talking about it because it is a big deal. The executive order is big. It's driving basically what we can expect from Customs Enforcement, where the administration is taking Customs, in terms of what they're looking at, what they're concerned about. I think we're seeing a shift into a much more heavy-handed enforcement space than I think a lot of us have experienced, at least I have experienced in my career here so far.
One thing to note is that Customs has recently issued a Federal Register notice, which is looking for feedback, and we really want to draw some attention to this. The feedback that they're looking for is with regard to a proposed requirement in the executive order to collect and submit export documentation, in connection with your importations. What that would theoretically mean is that you need to gather some sort of undefined, at this time, information that proves that the goods were exported from a particular country at a particular time. Again, this hasn't been defined. This is what Customs has currently been tasked with implementing, and they are seeking feedback on that. We do have a link to this Federal Register notice here. We really highly encourage you guys, go take a look at that, and understand how this might affect your supply chain.
Make sure you're detailing how difficult this would be to get access to some of this documentation. If you have knowledge about regulations in other countries, that would prohibit the submission of export declarations, for example. The U.S. is a great example of this. The U.S. has regs that do restrict the provision of the EEI, right, the U.S. export declaration, to any foreign party, or foreign government for any purpose. There are other countries that have similar restrictions. If you have knowledge about that's the type of information that we would suggest be submitted in these comments. The more comments that CBP can get around this, the better. Historically, these types of comments really help them shape their programs and how they're going to implement things.
I think the more comments we can be providing, as a trade, the better off we're all going to be. We also have done a whole webinar extensively about the executive order. This QR code here on this slide, if you scan that's going to take you directly to the recording of that webinar. If you're a little behind, or you feel like you've missed some of the information so far, you can go ahead and access a previously recorded webinar that we gave that delves into way more detail on the executive order itself. What I want to touch on really quickly is just some of the trends that we've started seeing, with regard to Customs and what they're focusing on.
We know that they're going to be focusing a little bit more on enforcement, based on that executive order, and we've seen some trends that are starting to back that up. As a broker, we get courtesy copies of all sorts of documentation from Customs that's really directed towards importers. Two types of communications we get from Customs are called CF-28s and CF-29s. What these are kind of requests for information from Customs, that's a CF-28, saying, "Hey, we got questions about an entry you submitted. We'd love more information."
We also get CF-29s, which are much more of, they're less of a request for information, and they're more Customs telling us, "Hey, we disagree with what you claimed on this particular entry. We're going to go ahead and make an update to that entry to make the correction, and here's why we're going to do that." There's two types of main communication we get from Customs with regard to entries that are filed.
This slide just shows kind of a breakdown of specifically with regard to these types of communications, kind of the high level areas of information that we're seeing. First of all, about 86% of the requests that we record as a broker are CF-28s and 29s. This is definitely the bulk of the type of request. This is how Customs contacts you as an importer, and then by proxy, us as a broker, most commonly is through these CF-28s and 29 forms. On the CF-28 side, we've received about 91 inquiries in the past 30 days, and you'll see the breakdown of topics here.
They range from a standard documentation request where we can't really maybe ascertain exactly what it is they're trying to hone in on, but they just are requesting additional documents. They might be specific to Section 232 or 301 or 122. They might be specific to country of origin. You can see we've received around 91. Most of them are general documentation requests from what we can tell at this time. If we flip it, though, to the CF-29, which is where Customs is now informing us and the importer, "Hey, we're going to go ahead and make a change to your entry because we disagree with what was submitted." We have more CF-29s, and then you can also see the topics of them become much more specific and much more voluminous.
USMCA, FTA, they've issued 29 that are either stating, "We disagree it was USMCA," or, "We think it should have been." They're moving it one way or another. Origin, same thing. They're questioning things and saying, "Hey, we have evidence to think this isn't actually the country of origin, so we're going to go ahead and change the country of origin." Which these days, right, often is going to potentially mean a duty increase or a duty bill for a lot of you. Same thing with Section 232, 122, 301. They're looking at these saying, "Hey, we disagree at how you processed this in the first place, and we're going to go ahead and make that correction for you." Really three things we really want you to be aware of, though, is these are really, really important for you as an importer to be responding to.
Your brokers should get a courtesy copy. We should be sending those to you as well. But you should also get a copy directly. It's really important to make sure you're responding to those within the time frames allotted on them. They almost always will stipulate how quickly they would like a response. Make sure you're producing that documentation as soon as you possibly can. Make sure that you can provide as much detail as possible. These requests are becoming more and more detailed. We're going to be looking at a few examples here in a second on the types of information they're actually asking for.
The more information that you can provide to substantiate your argument, or what it is you're trying to paint a picture, right, tell that story, the more information and backup you can provide to help customs put together those pieces as well, the better off you're going to be. And then just note that these, I think, probably historically may have been reviewed as slightly more routine. At least in my mind, they were a little bit more of a partnership between customs and the importer, saying, "Hey, we'd just like to get more information," or, "Hey, we'd just like to let you know we found something wrong. We're going to go ahead and advance that." But just keep in mind that these are now being issued through an enforcement lens. We're looking at a little bit more risk than there was before, right?
We're looking at a little bit different tone. And especially when you're talking about really high priority items like ADCVD, any of the tariff programs that they're implementing are going to be highly scrutinized, right? These are taking on a different level of risk than they may have been interpreted as in the past. Can we flip to the next slide, please? Thank you so much. I'm not going to read you these whole slides, don't worry, but I just want to show a few examples of CF-28s and 29s that we have received. Of course, we have completely anonymized them. We've removed all of the tariff codes and the countries of origin, anything that might out a particular company. But these are the types of things that customs is looking for and asking for. You'll see, these are CF-28s we're going to look at first.
We have one for a 9802 claim and one for a USMCA claim. They are both really looking for very detailed information, right? We will look at this 9802. They want to know why the goods were exported in the first place, why they are now being returned, any proof and every documentation to support the claim. Same thing with USMCA. They want purchase orders. They want any documentation identifying the actual producer and the actual manufacturer. They want bills of materials. They want any other records that you can provide, again, to build your case that this is truly a USMCA, eligible item that you are importing and why is it. Okay, can we go to the next example? Now check this one out.
They are getting more and more complicated, and we do know that Customs is using AI in order to both find out information for these particular manufacturers, suppliers overseas, but also to build the CF-28s and 29s. They are getting a lot more detailed, and they are based on a higher level of information and intel, I would say, than they were in the past. This is just an example of a CF-28 where Customs was requesting additional information to try to help make sure that the value that was declared actually made sense for the product. You will see here they are asking for photographs. They are asking for any support that supports the unit value that was declared. They want to see wire transfer records, bank payment confirmation. They want to see price lists or quotes that were received in connection with the original purchase.
They want manufacturing records, prototype prices, warranty pricing, right? Really, really, this is a much more drilled down, detailed ask, I think, than we have seen probably not ever before, but certainly in quite a few years, at the very least, the things that they are asking for. They also want information about the relationship with your sellers, with your vendors, with your manufacturers. This is getting much more detail than, again, it has been in quite a long time. Really making sure that you have the backup, that you are visiting your suppliers if possible, you are vetting all of your suppliers, you are vetting your manufacturers, right? We are really getting into a space where you really need to start knowing and vetting your entire supply chain.
And then we will now look at a CF-29 that we received, that is also quite complicated. If we can go to the next slide. Thank you so much. This is just, again, we have redacted everything, but this is a good example of a CF-29, and Customs was really focusing on connecting those dots and how everything worked together, or in this case, I think they do not think it works together very well to support what was claimed on the entry. Right? Here is just a statement in bold. "While the information shows that manufacturing activities do take place in country A, it does not fully address CBP's concerns." T he importer actually did receive a CF-28, and they submitted additional documentation to Customs , and Customs has taken all that information and saying, "Hey, thanks for the info, but we disagree still, and here is why."
And because of that, they went ahead and updated the country of origin, and you will see here there was a rate advance that went along with that. Okay, again, these are just examples that we're starting to receive, and this is not a one-off, unfortunately. A lot of these examples I've shown are ones that are becoming increasingly common, and Customs is really looking at that. I don't say any of this to scare you. I don't share any of this to scare you guys. But this is all something, it's going to become really important for us, everyone, brokers, importers, everyone, right, to really start taking stock in these communications that we're getting from Customs, and really making sure that the backup's in place to substantiate anything we're declaring on an entry.
So fun, happy notes. But let me turn it back over to Steph so she can bring us home, maybe lighten the mood a little bit, too.
I don't know if any of this is lightening the mood. We are just definitely in a very different time, and I think many of us are trying to kind of recalibrate our brain in terms of what does risk look like, where do I spend my time and energy, and at the same time, everything continues to shift on us. We are all in this together. As a broker, I know many of you as importers, none of us have the answers right now. We don't know what and where Customs is going. But we do have many, I'll say tea leaves, for lack of a better word, and that's what we keep talking about, is that we can't ignore and we can't keep doing business like we did even a year ago. Customs is significantly different.
Somebody's question in the chat was really saying, "How can Customs," I think this was the question, "How can Customs take action on something if I, the importer, haven't even confirmed yet the information?" And that is the fundamental thing that is happening, is they don't want you-- I shouldn't say they don't want you to confirm. They're not looking for you to confirm. They have invested in tools, and they genuinely believe that the actions that they're issuing in the CF-28s and 29s, these are not random requests. These are coming because they have intel, and they have things that are pointing to these concerns. And I'm hearing from our importers that they're not necessarily unfounded.
They're actually discovering more about their supply chain, because they have a CF-28 saying there's a component coming from this company, and when they go and research it with their buyers or sourcers or whoever, they're actually finding it to be true. It's not always perfect, but this is the thing, is that Customs has kind of leaped frog, leftover a lot of us in the trade with the intel that they have invested in, and they have bought software and they have done all these different things. This is part of what is kind of shaking our world, is that it's not being driven by the entry details that we're submitting day to day on entries. They're getting that, but they also are looking at this entire universe.
And that's where many of us are trying to figure out how we get our footing in this universe. It's not a perfect universe by any stretch of the imagination, but it has completely changed on us, and it's changed very quickly. Okay. That was my soapbox. What are actions that you can take right now? For tariff and trade remedy readiness, a lot of this, of course, has to do with Section 338 from Canada. Just to reiterate what Courtney already said, do not be fooled by the names of these actions. They named them alcoholic beverages, dairy, and motor vehicles. Do not think to yourself, "I don't import any of those." I don't care. This does nothing to do with those items. Those are the items that the U.S. government pointed to that they could show discrimination.
They picked a completely different list of HTS numbers that have nothing to do with dairy, that have nothing to do with motor vehicles, and those are the tariffs that they're targeting. You could absolutely be caught up in one of these import bans and have nothing to do with dairy. Okay? So just make sure that you, I want you to hear that very deeply. Okay? Then what are you going to do? We still have so many days, a whole week, before the import bans come on. You can front-load this stuff, get it into the U.S. If you can't afford the duties right now, what are some options? As Courtney said, the IEEPA China challenges from May 2025 are kind of a good benchmark. But this is different. This is trucking.
You can't just leave things at the port and cross your fingers and hope the tariff rate changes, right? So, be thinking about that, and what is your strategy? There's not an unlimited amount of bonded warehouses, not an unlimited amount of FTZs, and everybody's going to be trying to use them. Then the last one, definitely a cop-out bullet, really talking about the pharmaceuticals. But the Section 232s, if you pay them, they are going to keep shifting. So making sure that you have controls in place to know when these shift and if you have HTS numbers that could get reduced duty rates. The complexity of making sure that you can take those exemptions, we talked about this last month, continues to mount, but it's important, and there's opportunities there.
Enforcement, I feel like we're going to be talking about enforcement forever because we are at the tip of this iceberg. So first thing, Customs, of course, as Courtney said, 5106 data needs to be updated. I've answered a number of questions, and I'm sure my colleagues have as well. You can email the form to your center of excellence person. We can make updates as your broker, but we now have to go through many steps. CBP has said that I can't just update this. I need to do a Google search. I need to look at this. I need to look at this. You need to prove to me. I need to go there in person, ideally. And it's not just me, it's any broker. Okay? So something that was an admin task is now a whole thing on the broker side.
I don't like it, but here we are living in this new world. What a lovely bullet I put on there. Totally just in your casual time, map your supply chains beyond Tier 1. Ashley touched on this. This is really hard. There's not an easy button for this. We're all in this together. We're trying to figure out ways, and we will, I think, get better. But Customs truly believes that they have done this, and they think that they can use that data. They have a whole lot of intel about you, whether it's right or wrong, that they believe to be true and that they are using for this targeting. Of course, we talked a lot in the chat. I talked during the legal section on ACH refunds, making sure that that's updated, making sure you have a clear strategy.
Know anything that's in that finally liquidated box, and be having conversations internally with your folks, with your legal team, with your CFO, whoever's going to care, to say, "How much do we want to try to get that money?" Then financial planning, of course, the Russia secondary tariff exposure is definitely real. I know that Courtney said, "Hey, we can't put out a list of countries." It says five countries. I don't know what the government's going to land on as those five countries, what they're going to use their criteria as. That's why we said right now, the Internet can give you some ideas. You can use that as you would like, but for some of you, that's going to be very important to understand.
Figuring out which of your products are going to maybe be hit, have risk associated with them, what can you do, and to front-load that. Just a couple things in all of your spare time. We always include this slide for opportunities to engage. The biggest one here, and somebody said, "Is Expeditors going to comment?" Yes, we will. We might do it through a number of our trade associations. They're all working hard on this. Oh, no, I always get nervous. ANPRM, maybe? Did I nail it? The Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. But lots of people are working on this. It's 46 questions. You don't have to answer all of them. But we as a trade community really need to look at this. This is really expecting us to get all this documentation upstream, like export declarations.
This is a good opportunity, and we have a lot of, I'll say a lot of time, a lot of time in the current administration. This is a lot. We have till December 1st. There's some other items on here that you can look at. That USITC, that is the one where you can make comments about how discrimination is defined for Section 338. There's going to be a virtual COAC quarterly meeting that you can join, and then two other USTR items on here that are not quite as important, but you can click on those and check them out. Of course, the favorite part of the show, your certificate of completion, one credit for any licensed customs brokers out there or the NCBFAA, CICS, NCBFAA. I think I forgot an A.
Okay, Samantha , that was rough, but I landed right on time. I will turn it back over to you.
I am so impressed, and luckily, I cannot add too much to all the fantastic content you guys provided today, except for to say, as I mentioned in the chat, just remember a feedback survey will be coming to you all within about an hour to two hours. Please complete that, and at the end, you will be given a thank you message with a link right there on that message to all of today's materials. I am working to add everything that we have suggested, we will try to add to that material landing page for you all. In the end, we are at time. Thank you so much for joining. We appreciate you all jumping on, and we will do our best to get all of the unanswered questions answered or get you connected to an Expeditors support. Thank you all. Speakers, great job. Thank you.
Thank you everybody for joining. See you next month.