Zepol’s recent creation of the “HTS Code Widget” allows media partners and industry professionals to access up-to-date statistics on thousands of HTS Codes…directly from their websites!

It’s easy as 1, 2, 3:

This widget is available to media partners as well as industry professionals. If your company is interested in including this value-added service to your website, please Contact Us and we’ll send you the code to get rolling!

In the eyes of many children, this Halloween looks to be a successful one as chocolate imports are rising in preparation. This year has surpassed last year’s chocolate imports and shows significant growth that looks to continue for the rest of the year.

The graph below illustrates a trend of import values for chocolate and other food preparations containing cocoa (HTS - 1806). This past August marked the highest month of chocolate imports since October of 2008 with $153 million. Additionally, chocolate imports for August have increased by 17% over July and 25% over August 2009. Expectedly, August vessel weight is up 13% over July as well as a 16% increase from last August.

 

It looks like we will not have to worry about little vampires and fairies experiencing a shortage of chocolate this Halloween. 

 

The center of any importing program is the Harmonized Tariff Schedule also known as the HTS or HS. This system allows for the U.S. and other national governments to categorize products as they come into their respective countries. Each code has tariff rates assigned to it and some have quotas tied to them for specific countries. The entire HTS System for the United States consists of 22 sections and 99 chapters categorizing all products.

The HTS System is a key concept for importers, compliance professionals, and the companies that support them. Some of the many uses of the Harmonized System include:

• Compliance professionals apply HTS codes for proper import documentation
• Marketers research specific products based on the government’s classification system
• Sourcing professionals learn where their imports fit and how this affects landed costs

When compliance professionals assign HTS codes to products on import documentation, they are taking into consideration multiple factors. Most importantly, they want to ensure accuracy to limit the company’s risk to Customs actions and fines. HTS classification can be very straight forward or extremely complicated. This difference in difficulty is based not only on the make-up and use of the product, but also on how well the HTS defines categories for these products. Many new, innovative products are beyond the scope of the current HTS, but U.S. Customs and the World Customs Organization revise the system regularly to keep up with changing products.

Others use the HTS system for the “clean” product categories that it is derived from. Marketers and suppliers rely on the HTS to understand how different products and materials will change the cost of products from them and their competitors. In the end, no other government classification system has as much impact on an international business' bottom line as the HTS.

Zepol understands the complexity of the HTS System and the need for businesses involved in trade to access timely and accurate HTS information. As a result, we now provide the latest U.S. government statistics by HTS code. Visitors to our site can search for a specific HTS code (i.e. 9503000010) on www.zepol.com or visit our HTS code page to view a list of all HTS codes. Our data will show you how much, in terms of value, was imported into the United States for the last completed month, currently June.

For more information on the HTS and how the government statistics relate to them, please contact us now for special offers to our products.