Hello and welcome to Allocca Enterprises first quarterly electronic newsletter. Thank you to all of you who have either attended one of my training programs, allowed me to provide an in-house training at your facility or who has taken advantage of the compliance audit & consulting services. Having learned so much from each of you either from a class or from visiting your facilities, now it is time I share some of those best practices back with you.

Tips Corner

Top 3 things to get started on your NAFTA Compliance program;

1. Create a NAFTA team. Make sure you have a member from sales, customer service, purchasing, shipping, accounting, compliance officer and management.

2. Lookup and verify that you are using an up-to-date and accurate Harmonized tariff number (HTS). Create a product database, and list the proper HTS # next to each product.

3. Using the HTS # look up the duty in Canada or Mexico. If there is no duty and this is not an intermediate product, why are you filling out a NAFTA certificate? It is not a required entry document into either country. You should only be filling one out if you can prove your product qualifies for the benefits of NAFTA through the NAFTA rules of origin. So why take on the unnecessary liability of filling out a NAFTA certificate if there is no duty anyway?

Upcoming Training Programs

Nov 29th Bedford, NH 1-day NAFTA training
Dec 7th Harrisburg, PA 1-day NAFTA training
Jan 9th Las Vegas, NV 1-day NAFTA training
Jan 17/18th Orlando, FL 2-day Export Compliance
Jan 24th/25th Albany, NY 2-day Import Compliance

1st Fridays in Newburgh, NY Every 1st Friday of the month until May 2007 I conduct various compliance training at Stewart Airport for 2 hours. (Please send me an e-mail at mallocca@nycap.rr.com if you are interested in any of these programs.)>

U.S. Department of Commerce

Lawrence Scibetta Fined $30,000 and Denied Export Privileges for 20 years for an Unlicensed Export to the United Arab Emirates.

https://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2006/Scibetta08_17_06.htm

Jobs corner

Do you need another qualified traffic or logistics person at your company? If so, please let me know as I know several qualified individuals who are available. Also, if you know anyone looking for a traffic/logistics position, please have them get in touch with me.

Q&A

Please send me an e-mail about a compliance question you have. I will share the question and answer in the next newsletter so that everyone can benefit. Since this is the first newsletter I will chose a common compliance question.

Question:

As an importer in the US, can’t we just rely 100% on our customs broker to handle all of our product classifications and not be bothered with it? Isn’t that what we pay them for?

Answer:

No. As the importer of record in the U.S. you have the ultimate responsibility to make sure your customs broker is using the most accurate classification possible. This is called reasonable care. Remember a broker is an agent working on the importers behalf, and it is your responsibility as that importer to ensure they are classifying your products correctly. Besides, who knows your product better than you do? You should create a product list of every product you import and work with your customs broker together, to determine the correct HTS code. This list should be updated regularly as part of your due diligence.

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