The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), also referred to as the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA), comes into effect on July 1, 2020. Are you ready?
The full CUSMA Agreement was signed in November of 2018, and later amended in December 2019. In April of this year each of the three parties notified that they had completed
On May 6, 2020, the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) published Customs Notice 20-19 to provide information for Certain Goods Remission Order (COVID-19), SOR-2020-101 (“Remission Order”) under the Customs Tariff. In order to help the fight against COVID-19, the Remission Order allows for the relief of customs duty for eligible
We now know the dated that the Canada-United States- Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) (or USMCA under US terminology) will enter into effect to replace the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): July 1, 2020. This does not mean that the governments are ready to enforce CUSMA – Canada, United States and Mexico must now negotiate and
On March 30, 2020, the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) published Customs Notice 20-12 “COVID-19: Tariff Classification and Other Information to Import Medical Supplies”. This is welcomed and I for one am very proud of the CBSA for releasing this information – THANK YOU!
In this extremely helpful Customs Notice, the CBSA provides their
On March 16, 2020, the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) issued Customs Notice 20-08 “Imported Goods for Emergency Use in Response to COVID-19”, which discusses the circumstances where customs duty and goods and services tax (“GST”) /harmonized sales tax (“HST”) and excise tax relief will be granted for goods imported into Canada that will
On March 18, 2020, the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) issued Customs Notice 20-09 “Changes in Requesting an Extension to the 90-day Period to Submit Corrections” in which the deadline for filing corrections is automatically extended by 30 days. Normally, when the CBSA issues a final report to an importer under audit (called a “trade
This is a common problem – too common. The people in the company responsible for customs and trade compliance do not work closely with the computer programmers as software is being developed — and mistakes are made. The computer programmer does his or her job in preparing the code, but does not have any
Many U.S. and foreign companies that sell goods on Internet-based retail platforms (both in-house platforms and Amazon-type platforms) should ask more questions as they access Canada’s consumer market. Often, the first question asked by the foreign company is how to access the Canadian market (as they see dollar signs). After they foreign company figures out
Last week, I was informed by four different U.S. non-resident importers (or their representatives) that the non-resident companies were frustrated in their dealings with the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) – to the point that they may cease selling to Canadian customers. While some of the complaints were more connected with customs brokers, many of
The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (“Canada-EU CETA”) is a free trade agreement between Canada and the 28 countries of the European Union. The Canada-EU CETA is Canada’s largest free trade agreement since NAFTA. There are opportunities for Canadian importers to save the customs duties on goods that they are currently importing