U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a significant ruling in September that distinguished between North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) country-of-origin marking rules and the country-of-origin rules applying to products subject to Section 301 tariffs and trade remedy duties. In its ruling, CBP determined that Chinese-origin components imported into Mexico for assembly into an electric motor satisfied the requirements for marking the assembled product as a product of Mexico in accordance with the NAFTA Marking Rules; however, it ruled that the Chinese-origin components were not “substantially transformed” in Mexico and that the assembled final product remained a product of China subject to the U.S. government’s Section 301 retaliatory tariffs on imports of Chinese electric motors and to any potential trade remedy duty. CBP’s determination requires importers to understand thoroughly their supply chains, including the manufacturing processes of their suppliers and the origin of components used in those manufacturing processes.

View this entire client bulletin in HTML or PDF format.