After receiving over 4,000 Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) petitions seeking to temporarily reduce or eliminate tariffs on the import of various goods into the United States (see Trump and Trade Update of October 1, 2019), the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has been posting petitions satisfying the statutory filing criteria on a rolling basis on the MTB Petition System (MTBPS) portal. Beginning on January 10, 2020 and continuing until 5:15 p.m. ET on February 24, 2020, interested parties may file public comments on these petitions. All comments must be filed through the MTBPS portal during this 45-day comment period, and all comments will be visible to the public.
The USITC has recorded a webinar, “How to File a Comment on a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Petition,” which includes step-by-step instructions on how to file comments through the MTBPS portal. Among other helpful comments, the webinar notes that:
- Petitioners will NOT receive alerts if or when their petitions receive comments;
- Commenters (and rebutting petitioners) must bracket confidential information so as not to be included in any public version of the comments and rebuttals; and
- While all petitions are currently available in the MTBPS portal, USITC will soon provide a link to a user-friendly Excel file of all petitions with limited information such as product name, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) registry number and petition ID number.