Duty Drawback Expertise

Today we are talking with Paul Goodale, who is the director of procurement for Jewelry Television. Paul, thanks so much for being with us today. First, let's start out with why don't you tell us about jewelry, television and, and your role at J. TV?

Jewelry television is located in Knoxville, Tennessee. We have one campus where everything happens. We have five studios. If you turn on the TV and or see our station, our show going on. We buy jewelry from all over the world that comes straight to  Knoxville, and we inspect it and put it on TV. When you buy it, we send it to you. There are no stores, no middlemen. I've been here just over ten years  and I have a background in supply chain and logistics.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

I am joined by Jay Charkow, who's the president at ITM, and we also have with us today
one of our existing clients, Peter George. Peter's company has worked with us for years
and we've managed a duty drawback program. But today we're going to talk about classification. And Peter has come to us with an opportunity for a classification review.
We thought that it would be great to sit down with him and have him tell us a little bit about his product and determine if he is classifying his products properly.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

I'm Tony Sargis with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce Commercial Service, Connecticut office, and we're holding webinars for manufacturing month in October, we've received a lot of feedback regarding the Trade Talk Tuesday series. You'll note that the sessions are kind of quick, so we're here for about 20 minutes. We'll address a few questions in the Q&A at the end of the presentation.

Our speaker today is Jill LaMadeleine, Vice President at International Tariff Management. Jill is a duty drawback and classification specialist. ITM has been in the industry for over 40 years, helping clients find the correct answer Schedule B number for their products. And that's what we're going to talk about today. 

So the classification of goods process is extremely intricate and can be rather complex to navigate.  Today, we will talk about some tools that are available to assist you during the process.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Joining us today are Tony Sargis from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Joe Raycraft from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of International Trade, and Jay Charkow from International Tariff Management. I'd like to ask each of you to tell our listeners a little bit about the expertise that you are bringing to this conversation. 

Tony Sargis is a senior international trade specialist with the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Commercial Service out of Middletown, Connecticut. In this capacity, Tony works with small and medium sized companies to assist them in developing and achieving their export strategies. Tony assists clients with market research, export counseling, trade advocacy and business matchmaking.

Joe Raycraft is an export finance manager for the New England region with the U.S. Small Business Administration and is part of SBA's Office of International Trade.
As export Finance manager, Joe works to promote SBA's export loans through direct outreach to partner lender banks, small business Exporters and Exporter Research Partners. Joe has more than 25 years of private sector business experience, including international roles in the areas of manufacturing, commercial finance and banking.

Jay Charkow is the president of International Tariff Management and a frequent guest on our podcasts. Jay has been working with U.S. Customs for over 40 years
and is an expert in duty drawback services, classification, and free trade agreements.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Today we're going to talk about classification and  the number one question we get is why is a proper classification important? 

Anything that's brought into the United States must be classified according to the harmonized tariff schedule, and it's given a number and duties are assessed against that number. And other requirements such as federal other federal laws are applied against that number. And if the number is wrong, companies can be penalized for allowing those goods to come into the country improperly.

So it's extremely important. The first step in bringing anything into this country is to determine what the harmonized tariff number is. Individual companies importing the goods must institute the correct procedures to make sure that they classify their goods properly.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Today, we're going to be talking about the most frequently asked questions in regards to the 301 tariffs. If you joined us last month, we tackled all the frequently asked questions about duty drawback. And today we're going to shift our focus to the 301 duties. And joining me today, I'm lucky enough to have Jay Charkow, who is the president at ITM.

Well, nobody knows the 301 information more than you do Jay. 

Well, it comes out of a lot of research and and working with a lot of clients that pay a lot of 301 duties. 

So let's let's start really basic and let's why don't you tell us what is a 301 tariff.

Well, a 301 tariff is...could be good and it could be bad. It depends on your perspective of paying the 301 tariff. The U.S. Trade Representative back in 1974 established a trade act that gave the president and his administration the opportunity to penalize countries that were treating the U.S. businesses unfairly. And what happened was it gives them the authority to put tariffs on items coming in from those countries.

And the 301 is a section of the regulations. And what happened was that the Trump administration had decided that the Chinese businesses in many, many areas were not fairly treating the U.S. companies. And they imposed a series of tariffs on duties on things coming in from China. And basically, it's Section 301. And those are the tariffs that were imposed by the Trump administration on goods coming in from China.

And maybe you can clear something up for us here. I remember vividly when they imposed the 301 tariffs and there was talk about how China would pay them. But I don't think that was in fact, I know that's not what happened. So who who pays the 301 tariffs?

Well, what happens is like any tariff of goods coming into the United States, the importer is the one that pays the tariff. And I think there was some news information promoted by certain individuals that said these were paid by the Chinese. That's absolutely incorrect. The U.S. company that imports the goods are the ones that pay these tariffs. And unfortunately, in many cases, they have to be passed on to the consumer.

So in reality, the U.S. people in the United States are the ones that are paying the duties that were imposed. And these are not small duties. I know when they rolled out, they there was a scale. But what are what are these duty rates that are affected by the three oh ones?

They started initially they started at most of them at seven and a half percent. And they escalated in different sequences to in some cases 15 and in some cases 25%. Now, to put that into perspective, if an item costs a dollar and there's a 25% duty on it, that brings the cost up to a dollar 25, which is quite significant.

And again, the idea was to discourage people from buying goods in China and sourcing their materials elsewhere.

And then that that 301 is in addition to the base duty rate, if applicable. So you could be importing something from China and paying 5% and then you pay another 25%. So in essence, you're paying 30% duty on that product.

Exactly. And that example is a low number. There are some items that come in from various countries. Textile goods are an example where the duties could be 15 to 20%. So you could be paying 40 to 45% of the cost in duty before you even get the material into the United States, let alone the transportation costs. So the and so paying all that duty is a huge hit on importers into the United States. 

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Today, we're going to talk about the most frequently asked questions that we find in regards to duty drawback, which is one of the services that we specialize in. Joining me today for our discussion is Samantha Vallee. Samantha is a tariff manager at ITM and has graciously agreed to join me today and share the top questions people have in regards to duty drawback. Today, we'll answer those questions for you.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

In this month's episode, we are fortunate to be joined by Danielle Orcutt and Ed Kim from Corpay. They will be discussing how to minimize currency exchange volatility in global trade. Corpay is a global leader in business payments. Corpay delivers unmatched service and expertise with respect to moving money globally. They provide power to their clients international payments and execute plans to manage currency risk in order to support their growth around the world.

Corpay will look at your full assets exposure, identify potential risks, and create a hedging policy for you. So there's no need for expensive technology. We offer this service free and we provide you customized reports.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Today, our special guest is Matthew Lee Sawyer. Matthew is the author of Making It in America and an expert on how international companies and entrepreneurs successfully enter and scale in U.S. markets. Matthew is also a Columbia NYU professor, a business marketing strategist who has a rich history helping many recognizable large companies build their brand. He is also the director of Rocket Market Development. Matthew has won many industry awards, including the gold and silver fees, and he has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a pioneer in digital marketing, and most recently, his book was spotlighted in Forbes.

We hope the topic of making it in America would provide some added value for our listeners.  

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Today we are going to discuss rejected drawback opportunities for all our importers.  So there are four different types of rejected merchandise that we typically see: 1) rejected merchandise that does not conform to sample or specifications; 2) merchandise that may be the wrong size/dimension; 3)  merchandise that may be the wrong color; or 4)  merchandise that may be the wrong material type.  So, for various reasons, companies have items in their inventory that need to be exported back out of the country because the merchandise is defective or it's been shipped without consent. 

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.