NAFTA

Question:   I know the NAFTA certificate was updated in January (added email address to importer/exporter/producer but I don’t see this requirement on the form 434 or in the actual text for Annex 401. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  a.       New for 2016: Please include the % of US or foreign content per material […]

Question: When reviewing NAFTA certificates for accuracy, if a producer enters “C” for the preference criterion, is it possible to have “NC” in field 9? I would appreciate if someone could explain to me why yes or why not. Also in a previous NAFTA related ICPA answer I saw a note that said if the […]

Question: We are an importer of NAFTA eligible (claimed) parts and full units (consisting of numerous components). What is a reasonable approach for an internal auditor to take with respect to our claims? We already review the certificates for superficial evaluation. What are other compliance specialists doing in “auditing” or “evaluating” their certificates? ============ Answer: […]

Question: We have a supplier of expanded polystyrene molded packaging located in Mexico.   We purchase the product in the US and it is then purchased by and exported to our Maquiladora. The supplier provides a NAFTA certificate for the materials and classifies the materials as 3926.90.33 which makes perfect sense to me as the […]

Question: My company buys from two suppliers who produce many of the same parts.  One supplier is located in Canada, the other is in the US. Both suppliers are in the NAFTA territory, participate in NAFTA and provide certificates for the parts they supply. On the NAFTA certificates from the suppliers, both companies classify their […]

Question: Is there any explicit rule that would preclude a foreign (NON NAFTA territory) entity from completing a NAFTA certificate (and reflecting itself as the Exporter)?   The goods on the NAFTA Certificate are eligible for the NAFTA. ************ ANSWERS: Under Canadian FTA policy/law, the exporter must be “in the Party”, meaning having a physical […]

Question: We will be importing cotton diapers from Mexico under 9619. The current rules for NAFTA don’t include heading 9619 since it was added to the HTS fairly recently. Do I use the previous tariff codes to determine NAFTA status? *********** Answers: You may want to try the Trade Agreement office at FTA@dhs.gov.  The Chile […]

Question: We are a medium sized manufacturing firm with three Maquila operations in Mexico that produce a significant amount of our products. When the Mexican site is preparing the NAFTA certifications (as the exporter) we are unsure of who should be listed as the “producer.” CROSS ruling HO28880 indicates that the US owner of the […]

Question: Our company currently has differing opinions on how far to “drill” down for a Preference Criteria C on our NAFTA certificate.  Does anyone know if there is a formal definition for a raw material vs a component? Do we look at the top level Bill of Material (BOM) only or should we drill down […]

Question: We import Product X from Canada and the Canadian producer of Product X provides us with a NAFTA Certificate of Origin. US Customs recently sent us a CF-28 requesting a sample of Product X to be tested in their lab, as well as copies of the purchase order, descriptive information, breakdown and costs of […]