Product Exclusions

What You Should Know

As part of the Section 301 actions, the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) determination included a decision to establish a product exclusion process.  As part of the exclusion process, the USTR invites comments from interested persons with respect to the proposed action to be taken in the investigation.  The USTR requests comments with respect to any aspect of the proposed action, including:

• The specific tariff subheadings to be subject to increased duties, including whether the subheadings listed in the Annex should be retained or removed, or whether subheadings not currently on the list should be added
• The level of the increase, if any, in the rate of duty
• The appropriate aggregate level of trade to be covered by additional duties

Public Hearings and Deadlines for Submitting Exclusion Requests

If you have a pending product exclusion request with the USTR and you are concerned that an entry may liquidate before the USTR renders a decision on the exclusion request, you can:

• Request an extension of the liquidation deadline and file a Post Summary Correction no later than 15 days prior to the extended date of liquidation
• File a protest up to 180 days after liquidation

Product Exclusions Granted

To date, the USTR has published the following Federal Register notices granting product exclusions requests for the lists below.

The USTR has partially reopened the exclusion process for 549 products, spanning all four lists.  USTR Katherine Tai said the Biden administration believes the tariffs are effective and intends to continue to use them, but will examine the review process to more effectively target the goods on which the tariffs are applied and may eventually provide an opportunity to request extensions of other expired exclusions.

Product exclusions granted by the USTR are retroactive to the effective date.  List 1 and 2 exclusions will extend for one year after the publication of the exclusion notice in the Federal Register, while List 3 exclusions will expire of 8/7/2020.  Per the USTR’s Federal Register notices, the product exclusions are available for any product that meets the description in the annex to the Federal Register notice, regardless of whether the importer filed an exclusion request.  The scope of each inclusion is governed by the scope of the 10-digit subheadings and product descriptions listed in the annex, not by the product descriptions set out in any particular request for exclusion.

Importers of Record (IOR) may request an administrative refund for products which were granted an exclusion by the USTR by filing a Post Summary Correction.  Post Summary Corrections may be filed 300 days after release or 15 days prior to liquidation, whichever occurs first.