Cotton Import Fee Exemption Removed

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service has issued a final rule that, effective 15 July, will remove the cotton import de minimis provision, which exempts importers from paying the cotton fee on cotton or cotton-containing products when the line item value is US$2.00 or less. This exemption was initially established to lessen the administrative burden of collecting the cotton fee where the costs of collection would exceed the value of the assessment. However, technological advances in CBP’s documentation process have reduced the collection costs and the agency has stopped charging USDA for the collection of assessments on agricultural commodities.

For goods subject to the cotton fee, the total value of assessments levied on cotton imports (which is currently US$0.012013 per kilogramme) is the sum of two parts. The first is based on the weight of cotton imported and levied at a rate of US$1 per bale (500 pounds). The second is based on the value of imported cotton lint or the cotton contained in imported cotton products and levied at a rate of five-tenths of one percent of the value of domestically produced cotton.