Latest news with #U.S.Customs
CNBC
4 days ago
- Automotive
- CNBC
Inside the trade war's tariff hideouts, 'foreign' zones and bonded warehouses
To offset the rising costs of tariffs and trade war uncertainty, companies are using U.S. Customs-sanctioned foreign trade zones (FTZs) and bonded warehouses to delay or reduce product taxes. FTZs have a long history dating back to a previous period of trade conflict, created during the Great Depression by Congress to encourage international trade and boost exports at time when the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were as high as 53%. Companies importing raw materials, semi-finished, or components from foreign countries to an FTZ or bonded warehouse are essentially in a tariff bubble, meaning when they enter the U.S. they are stored duty-free. Once inside an FTZ, a product can be assembled or modified. Duties are only collected after a product leaves the zone and enters U.S. commerce. Products can be stored in an FTZ indefinitely. Bonded warehouses have a limit of up to five years. There are FTZs in all 50 states and there are approximately 2,240 FTZs in all across the nation, according to U.S. Customs. For companies caught in the crossfire of Trump's trade war, preserving cash is king. By delaying duty payments, "FTZs and bonded warehouses essentially frees up a company's cash flow," said Jason Strickland, director of sales at logistics firm Givens. "There is also the added benefit that if a product is manufactured in an FTZ and is re-exported abroad, no duty payments are incurred at all." Before the 2025 global trade war, companies that manufactured products in an FTZ had what is known as an "inverted tariff" benefit. That means the company had the option of paying a lower duty rate on the finished product versus paying the higher duties on the individual components brought into the manufacturing process. Companies that have operated inside FTZs include automakers Ford, GM and Chrysler, as well as General Electric, Intel and Sony. According to the World Free Zones Organization, FTZs were also used by Pfizer while it was developing the Covid vaccine. The program enabled Pfizer to produce shots without incurring additional duties on the drugs' components and store the vaccine until it received FDA approval. But President Trump ended that rule by way of recent executive orders, and for companies like Regent Tek Industries, which manufactures liquid road markings used by road crews to make the lines on the nation's roads, byways, and highways, that's become a big problem, resulting in millions of dollars in extra tariffs. "Our product is basically like baking a cake," said Helen Torkos, president of Regent Tek. "If you're missing one ingredient, you can't make that cake. We cannot source all of our components here. We are paying around 7% more now because the inverted tariff option is no longer available to us." Without the benefit of the FTZ inverted tariff, many companies quickly shifted to bonded warehouses. Strickland described the demand to CNBC as being through the roof. Companies can import products in a bubble under a higher tariff rate, and store without paying duties. But unlike the locking in of tariff rates on FTZs, if the tariff drops while a product is in a bonded warehouse, the company can release their product and pay the lower tariff rate. "At the end of the day, the goal is to protect your cash flow," Strickland said. "You don't want to bring in all your goods and spend your cash flow against tariffs that may not be here in, you know, six weeks, six months, if you can defer until the market is ready to consume those goods. I think that's a win-win."
Time Business News
06-06-2025
- Business
- Time Business News
Do I Need to Trademark in the U.S. if I Already Registered in the UK?
For UK businesses expanding into the United States, a common question arises: if you already hold a registered trademark in the UK, is it necessary to register the same trademark in the U.S.? The short answer is yes. A UK trademark does not offer protection in the U.S. Without U.S. registration, your brand may be unprotected in one of the world's largest markets. Trademarks are inherently territorial. A UK registration only protects your brand within the UK. If you're entering the U.S. market, you'll need to protect your intellectual property there too. Without a U.S. registration, if a local competitor uses or registers your mark, you may have limited options to stop them—even if you've used the mark in the UK for years. That's why many companies consult a commercial contract lawyer to align IP rights with contractual protections and mitigate the risks of brand dilution or market exclusion. In addition, registering your trademark in the U.S. demonstrates your commitment to operating legitimately in the market, which can strengthen relationships with distributors, partners, and investors. Operating without a registered U.S. trademark brings multiple risks: Loss of brand exclusivity Legal action from a U.S. company holding the mark Customs block on imported goods bearing the unregistered mark Inability to secure a .com domain or U.S.-specific social media handles Barriers to launching U.S. marketing campaigns or influencer partnerships These issues can delay your market entry and increase legal exposure, particularly in highly competitive sectors. The United States follows a first-to-use system, but federal protection under the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides stronger legal benefits. Key benefits of U.S. trademark registration: Nationwide legal protection and presumptive ownership Public listing of your brand in the USPTO database Right to use the ® symbol in the U.S. Ability to block infringing imports via U.S. Customs Enhanced leverage in litigation and commercial negotiations If you haven't launched in the U.S. yet, you can file an Intent to Use (ITU) application, allowing you to secure rights before sales begin. Many companies also use escrow structures to hold rights or payments pending registration. You should apply for a U.S. trademark as soon as: You plan to sell to U.S. customers (online or offline) You're signing U.S. distribution or licensing agreements You want to secure your brand for long-term expansion You're rebranding or designing packaging for global distribution Engaging a firm with escrow services uk capability can also support any associated licensing or commercial IP deals requiring secure payment arrangements. This is often a core feature of IP transfers or brand partnerships where risk is shared between parties. Absolutely. There are experienced us lawyer that can manage the entire process—from trademark clearance searches to filing, prosecution, and enforcement. This means you don't have to coordinate between jurisdictions or worry about miscommunication between two different legal teams. Dual-qualified lawyers can handle both your UK and U.S. trademark portfolios, alongside related commercial matters, such as IP clauses in international agreements. Having a local point of contact in London makes legal strategy more accessible and efficient for UK businesses, especially those with limited in-house counsel resources. At Abrams Law, we are dual-qualified UK solicitors and U.S. Attorneys. We offer: U.S. trademark search and filing via USPTO Monitoring and enforcement of U.S. trademark rights Guidance on protecting IP in commercial contract agreements Assistance with escrow services for brand licensing or sale transactions Local expertise on cross-border compliance, marketing risk, and legal remedies We act as a bridge between jurisdictions, ensuring your brand is protected in both the UK and U.S. markets. Expanding into the U.S. without securing your trademark is a high-risk move. Don't leave your intellectual property exposed. Speak to a commercial contract lawyer with U.S. experience today. 📧 Email: info@ 📞 Phone: +44 208 004 7016 TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SONAR unveils Trade War Command Center amid supply chain volatility
In response to the escalating complexity of global trade disruptions, SONAR has launched its Trade War Command Center, a comprehensive solution designed to help logistics professionals navigate the unpredictable landscape shaped by recent trade policies. The platform comes at a critical time as supply chains continue to face pressures from shifting trade agreements, tariffs and geopolitical tensions that have characterized international commerce in recent years. The Trump administration's aggressive trade policies, including tariffs on billions of dollars of imported goods, have created unprecedented challenges for logistics managers, procurement teams and supply chain strategists. These policies have forced companies to reconsider sourcing strategies, routing decisions and inventory management practices, often with limited visibility into how these disruptions ripple through the global supply network. The Trade War Command Center aims to address these challenges by offering a unified view of international and domestic freight flows, warehousing pressures, and trade lane shifts. Located under the platform's Insights dropdown menu, this centralized dashboard provides users with the ability to monitor multiple freight modes simultaneously while tracking inventory and warehouse trends that signal future market movements. At the heart of the Command Center is a suite of data-driven tools designed to provide comprehensive market intelligence. The platform tracks ocean container booking volumes for the top 10 U.S. ports and countries shipping to the U.S., offering forward-looking insights into container movements that help identify emerging or declining trade lanes. Complementing this view, U.S. Customs TEU import volumes provide data when the freight is actually landing, allowing users to identify ports gaining or losing market share amid shifting trade domestic logistics planning, the platform incorporates National Truckload Volumes data to gauge inland freight demand and potential capacity constraints. Intermodal Container Volumes tracking offers visibility into both international and domestic rail shipments across the top 10 rail terminals, providing crucial information about mode shifts that often occur in response to trade disruptions. Perhaps most innovative is the integration of the Logistics Managers' Index, enabling users to easily compare freight movement data with broader supply chain metrics. This feature tracks inventory levels, indicating whether shippers are restocking or depleting – a critical signal for forecasting future freight demand. The platform also monitors warehouse capacity and pricing, enabling users to anticipate storage constraints and cost pressures that frequently accompany trade disruptions. 'Whether you're managing procurement, transportation or logistics strategy, this dashboard offers the real-time intelligence you need to respond faster, plan smarter and reduce exposure to unexpected volatility,' said Julie Van de Kamp, SONAR's chief customer officer. This real-time intelligence has become increasingly valuable as companies face shorter decision time frames and greater consequences for misreading market signals. For logistics managers grappling with tariff impacts, the Trade War Command Center provides specific benefits. By revealing how volumes are shifting across countries, ports and transportation modes, the platform helps identify alternative sourcing locations, optimal port routings and the most cost-effective transportation modes. This comprehensive view enables companies to make proactive decisions rather than merely react to disruptions after they've already impacted platform also addresses a common challenge in today's fragmented supply chain management landscape: the need to connect disparate data sources. 'By connecting port, intermodal, truckload and warehouse insights in one place, it enables teams to make decisions proactively, with clarity and confidence,' Van de Kamp explained. This integration helps break down information silos that often prevent companies from seeing the complete picture of how trade disruptions affect their operations. As trade tensions continue to influence global commerce, tools like the Trade War Command Center will likely become essential components of resilient supply chain management. The platform represents a significant step toward providing the visibility and analytical capabilities needed to transform unpredictable trade environments from threats into opportunities for competitive advantage. For more information on SONAR's Trade War Command Center, click here. The post SONAR unveils Trade War Command Center amid supply chain volatility appeared first on FreightWaves. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Retreats On His Trade War's Chinese Front, Claims Big Victory
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday retreated on the Chinese tariffs portion of his trade war against the world, calling it a great success that would 'be fantastic for us.' 'They've agreed to open China, fully open China,' he told reporters just prior to setting off to the Middle East for his first extended foreign trip since returning to the White House in January. The new 30% rate on most Chinese goods is a small fraction of the 145% rate he had set last month, but is still three times the 10% rate he has said will be a baseline for all foreign imports, with higher 25% rates for steel, aluminum and automobiles. The lower rate will last 90 days with the expectation of a broader agreement with China, but Trump said that even if the rate goes higher, it will likely not go back up to 145%. 'You know, at 145, you're really decoupling because nobody's going to buy,' he said. 'But they'd go substantially higher.' In any case, even if Trump settles on a broad tariff of 10% for all foreign goods, it would be the largest import tax since the one that deepened and prolonged the Great Depression nearly a century ago and would impose a new tax on American importers of more than $2 trillion over a decade. American consumers would ultimately pay that in the form of higher prices. 'The president has not-quite-a-deal with China that manages to temporarily unwind the self-inflicted damage from 'Liberation Day,'' said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. 'Other than selling a few planes to the U.K., he has nothing to show for his tariff fusillade except a weakened U.S. economy.' As he does almost every time he discusses his more targeted tariffs on Chinese goods during his first term, which he claimed he had done to force China to buy more agricultural products from the United States, Trump lied about their effect. 'You know, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China,' he said. In fact, neither China nor Chinese exporters paid the United States a dime. U.S. tariffs are collected by U.S. Customs from American importers, primarily wholesalers and manufacturers, at U.S. ports of entry. Monday's retreat on the China tariffs repeats what Trump did with his so-called 'reciprocal' tariffs on all other countries. He announced higher import tax rates on dozens of nations not based on what those countries charge on American goods, as he claimed, but rather based solely on the size of a country's surplus with the United States — a largely meaningless metric. He announced those rates with great fanfare on his April 2 'Liberation Day,' but then put a 90-day moratorium on them just a week later after the market for U.S. treasuries showed that purchasers around the world were losing confidence in the U.S. dollar. Trump's remarks came at a news conference announcing his executive order that, by fiat, forces drug companies to charge Medicare no more for medications than the lowest amount they charge for the same drug anywhere in the world. The issue has been a staple for many Democrats for decades, who have unsuccessfully pushed for legislation addressing the disparity in how pharmaceutical companies price their products globally. Whether Trump has the authority to force drug companies to change their prices with merely a signature, rather than an actual law passed by Congress, is unclear, and the order may be blocked in court.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Trump Boasts Of New Deal That Triples Taxes On Americans Buying British Products
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump boasted on Thursday of a new trade agreement that, on average, triples the taxes Americans will have to pay on British imports while signaling that higher tariffs will be the norm for agreements with other countries as well. According to a chart used by Trump, the new trade deal with the United Kingdom will bring in $6 billion in 'external revenue,' a term he and his administration dishonestly use to describe payments collected by U.S. Customs from American importers. The new 10% rate for nearly all goods, which was announced last month for countries all over the world, is three times higher than the 3.4% average rate Americans have paid for goods from Britain and Northern Ireland. 'It's an anti-trade deal,' said Scott Lincicome, the director of economics at the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. He and other economists said that Trump's description of that 10% rate as the minimum tax level for all coming trade agreements effectively makes the United States a high-tariff country and will be a continuing drag on the economy. 'That is largely in line with my fears,' said Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama White House and now a professor at Harvard University. 'Best case is emerge from Trump with a 12% average tariff rate on world. That is back to the 1940s and on par with Iran and Venezuela.' University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers said, 'A 10% across-the-board tariff is ridiculously high, and about five or ten times higher than any of our trading partners.' Trump said he agreed to lower his 25% tax on imported cars to 10% for the first 100,000 cars entering from the U.K. each year to help the British auto industry because it mainly produces high-end luxury cars. 'They make a very small number of cars that are super luxury, and that includes Bentley and Jaguar,' he said. In return, the U.K. has agreed to open its market to American beef and other agricultural products, Trump said. 'We're a very big country. We have a lot of beef. We're a very big country,' he added. Trump also continued pushing his repeated lies about how international trade works, claiming, again, that the United States 'loses' money when Americans buy foreign goods and that other countries pay U.S. tariffs. 'That means we lose less money,' he said when asked during an Oval Office photo opportunity about shipping traffic falling off at U.S. ports and dock workers and truckers fearing for their jobs. 'Look, China was making over a trillion ― 1.1 trillion, in my opinion. You know, different numbers from 500 billion to 1 trillion or 1.1 trillion. And frankly, if we didn't do business, we would have been better off.' He then repeated a favorite falsehood of his over the years about the tariffs he imposed on Chinese imports during his first term: 'China paid hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, when I was president.' In reality, foreign nations pay none of those tariffs. American importers do, predominantly manufacturers buying raw materials and retailers. Both pass along the import taxes in the form of higher prices paid by consumers. If all the tariff rates announced by Trump on his so-called 'Liberation Day' on April 2 go into effect, it will cost American importers and consumers an extra $2.4 trillion in new taxes over a decade. Economics Professor Utterly Shreds Trump's Trade Chaos In 5 Seconds Flat Wall Street Journal Flames Trump Over His 'Worst Idea Since Tariffs' U.S., Britain To Announce Trade Deal On Thursday, New York Times Says Britain's PM Seeks Strong Ties With Both The EU And Trump. That Could Be Tricky.
