Assists

QUESTION: We provide printed retail packaging to our overseas vendor. They manufacture,  package and ship to us in the US ready for retail sale. Is this an assist? ========== Answers: “Retail packing” is not necessarily an assist but is “packing costs” and is to be added to the price actually paid or payable. See pages […]

QUESTION: We have a tooling, an assist, that we are providing to our vendor located in China.  However, our  vendor in China is asking us to ship to their other location in Hong Kong and they will create some sort of internal tooling contract to send the tooling to their location in China.  This is because […]

QUESTION: We have 20 new items that have been made with tooling and associated productions costs for a total price that we paid to our vendor.The first production run of all these items is due in, and we want to pay the whole assist up front, on the first entry, since the item is a […]

QUESTION: We procure a mold that costs $20,000 and provide it to our overseas manufacturer.  The anticipated production that we need from that mold is 20,000 units, which will be imported into the US. We plan to apportion the value of the assist over the anticipated 20,000 units.  However, after 5,000 units are made, we […]

QUESTION: We have a tooling that we own in the U.S. that we will be providing free of charge to a new supplier in country A to produce some component parts.  The component parts are then exported to another one of our suppliers in country B for assembly into another sub-assembly component part.  The sub-assembly […]

QUESTION: We found a potential missed assist while auditing and are investigating further to determine if it really is an assist and or if the values were declared as assists. Our process is always to declare on the first entry, and as this hasn’t come up before, we’re looking for advice from the membership. If […]

QUESTION: We are sending two drives to Canada for a company to test the equipment they are selling to use to make sure they work correctly. Will these drives that we send to them “free of charge” be considered an assist and would we need to add in the freight to get these drives to […]

QUESTION: I received this vague comment from a Chinese supplier re: reduced import duties on R&D costs: ‘In regard to invoices, I have been told that there is a certain percentage of the cost in products involved with research and development, which is tariff free.  We can present the invoice properly so that it will […]

QUESTION: If you include the value of an assist provided to a supplier in Canada in your declared value, and under USMCA the finished article is originating content in your bill of material, and then from an accounting standpoint, the tooling owned by the principal/manufacturer is considered overhead/manufacturing/operating expenses, which is also originating, is that, […]

QUESTION: I would like guidance on an assist situation from the membership. Our US entity pays forward to an unrelated Chinese entity that purchases and imports raw material of plant origin and transfers it to a related Chinese manufacturing entity for a fee that covers their services. The raw material is used to manufacture two […]

OT Fact Sheet: Origin Certification Requirements QUESTION: Does anyone in the membership have a document they would be willing to share on the questions they ask their purchasing / sales / engineering teams that covers import assists?  Also, what is the flow of that information within your organization. =========== Answer You may want to make […]