On Tuesday, September 18, 2018, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced a process for obtaining product exclusions from the 25% tariffs on certain products imported from China as a response to the Section 301 investigation on China’s trade practices.

The tariffs were put in place on August 23, 2018. USTR is now providing the opportunity for companies to request an exclusion of a particular product through Regulations.gov. The Federal Register notice can be found here.

The exclusion process has the following important dates and features:

• Requests for product exclusions are due by December 18, 2018.
• Following public posting of the filed request on Regulations.gov, the public will have 14 days to file comments or 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.
• An exclusion, if granted, will be applied retroactively to the August 23, 2018 date of the imposition of the additional duties and will be effective for one year after the publication of the exclusion determination in the Federal Register.

For additional information, please contact Jeffrey S. Neeley, Nithya Nagarajan, Stephen Brophy, or Beau Jackson.