Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (USMCA) Implementing Regulations Related to Textile and Apparel Goods, Automotive Goods, and Other USMCA Provisions

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>U.S. Customs and Border Protection</SUBAGY> DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <CFR>19 CFR Parts 10, 24, 113, 123, 141, 144, 163, 174, and 182</CFR> <DEPDOC>[USCBP-2024-0017; CBP Dec. 24-18]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1685-AA00 (Formerly RIN 1515-AE65)</RIN> <SUBJECT>Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (USMCA) Implementing Regulations Related to Textile and Apparel Goods, Automotive Goods, and Other USMCA Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security; Department of the Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This interim final rule amends the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations to add implementing regulations for the preferential tariff treatment and related customs provisions of the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (USMCA) with respect to general definitions, drawback and duty-deferral programs, textile and apparel goods, and automotive goods. This document also amends the regulations to implement the temporary admission of goods, to delineate recordkeeping and protest requirements, to clarify the fee provisions, and to make conforming amendments, including technical corrections to other laws as required by statute. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This interim final rule is effective on March 18, 2025. However, compliance with the labor value content certification, steel purchasing certification, and aluminum purchasing certification provisions in §§ 182.95, 182.96, and 182.97 will only be required for those vehicle certifications submitted to CBP on or after May 19, 2025. Comments regarding this interim final rule must be received by March 18, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please submit comments, identified by <E T="03">docket number</E> USCBP-2024-0017, by the following method: Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> . Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number for this rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">Operational Aspects and Audit Aspects:</E> Raymond J. Irizarry, Director, Textiles and Trade Agreements Division, Trade Policy and Programs, Office of Trade, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, (202) 945-7236 or <E T="03">FTA@cbp.dhs.gov</E> . <E T="03">Legal Aspects:</E> Yuliya A. Gulis, Director, Commercial and Trade Facilitation Division, Regulations and Rulings, Office of Trade, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, (202) 325-0042 or <E T="03">yuliya.a.gulis@cbp.dhs.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> Interested persons are invited to participate in this rulemaking by submitting written data, views, or arguments on all aspects of this interim final rule. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) also invites comments that relate to the economic, environmental, or federalism effects that might result from this interim final rule. Comments that will provide the most assistance to CBP will reference a specific portion of the interim final rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include data, information or authority that support such recommended change. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> On November 30, 2018, the “Protocol Replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement with the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada” (the Protocol) was signed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States (Mexico), and Canada (the USMCA)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> is attached as an annex to the Protocol and was subsequently amended to reflect certain modifications and technical corrections in the “Protocol of Amendment to the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada” (the Amended Protocol), which the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) signed on December 10, 2019. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada is the official name of the USMCA treaty. Please be aware that, in other contexts, the same document is also referred to as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. </FTNT> Pursuant to section 106 of the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (19 U.S.C. 4205) and section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2191), the United States approved and implemented the USMCA through the enactment of the United States—Mexico—Canada Agreement Implementation Act (USMCA Implementation Act), Pub. L. 116-113, 134 Stat. 11 (19 U.S.C. Chapter 29), on January 29, 2020. Section 103(a)(1)(B) of the USMCA Implementation Act (19 U.S.C. 4513(b)(1)) provides the authority for new or amended regulations to be issued to implement the USMCA, as of the date of its entry into force. Mexico, Canada, and the United States certified their preparedness to implement the USMCA on December 12, 2019, March 13, 2020, and April 24, 2020, respectively. As a result, pursuant to paragraph 2 of the Protocol, which provides that the USMCA will take effect on the first day of the third month after the last signatory party provides written notification of the completion of its domestic procedures required for entry into force, the USMCA entered into force on July 1, 2020. Subsequent to the USMCA's entry into force date, on December 27, 2020, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (Appropriations Act), Pub. L. 116-260, was enacted with Title VI of the Act containing technical corrections to the USMCA Implementation Act. All of the changes contained within Title VI of the Appropriations Act are retroactively effective on July 1, 2020, the USMCA's entry into force date. <E T="03">See</E> sections 601(h) and 602(g) of Title VI of the Appropriations Act. These changes included amending section 202 of the USMCA Implementation Act (19 U.S.C. 4531) to prohibit non-originating goods used in production processes within foreign trade zones (FTZs) from qualifying as originating goods under the USMCA. <E T="03">See</E> section 601(b) of Title VI of the Appropriations Act. Additionally, section 601(e) of Title VI of the Appropriations Act amended 19 U.S.C. 1520(d) to allow the refund of merchandise processing fees for USMCA post-importation claims. The Appropriations Act also included technical corrections to other laws. These other laws, such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act and the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, implemented the relevant trade preference programs using the NAFTA rules of origin. With the repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act (NAFTA Implementation Act), section 602(a) and (b) of Title VI of the Appropriations Act amended these other laws to include the USMCA rules of origin. Pursuant to USMCA Article 5.16, the United States, Mexico, and Canada trilaterally negotiated and agreed to Uniform Regulations. The USMCA Free Trade Commission adopted the Uniform Regulations in its Decision No.1, effective as of the date of entry into force of the USMCA. Annex I to that decision includes:  <E T="03">https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/united-states-mexico-canada-agreement/free-trade-commission-decisions/usmca-free-trade-commission-decision-no-1.</E> </FTNT> • The Uniform Regulations Regarding the Interpretation, Application, and Administration of Chapter 4 (Rules of Origin) and Related Provisions in Chapter 6 (Textile and Apparel Goods) of the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (Uniform Regulations regarding Rules of Origin), and • The Uniform Regulations Regarding the Interpretation, Application, and Administration of Chapters 5 (Origin Procedures), 6 (Textile and Apparel Goods), and 7 (Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation) of the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United Mexican States, and Canada (Uniform Regulations regarding Origin Procedures). <FP>In accordance with USMCA Article 5.16, modifications or additions to the Uniform Regulations shall be considered regularly by the USMCA Parties to reduce their complexity and to ensure better compliance. To this end, further iterations of the Uniform Regulations may be negotiated. Part 182 of title 19 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) (19 CFR part 182) contains the Uniform Regulations regarding Chapter 4 Rules of Origin and related provisions of Chapter 6 in Appendix A. The Uniform Regulations for Chapter 5, remaining provisions of Chapter 6, and Chapter 7 regarding Origin Procedures are incorporated in title 19 of the CFR, including 19 CFR part 182, as appropriate for U.S. administrative processes and procedures. Part 182 of title 19 of the CFR will be amended through subsequent rulemaking to reflect future changes to both sets of the Uniform Regulations, as needed.</FP> The USMCA superseded NAFTA and its rela ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 359k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━