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.

The U.S. Census Bureau released its Merchandise Trade data numbers on August 11th for June 2010. The Merchandise Trade balance increased 54.1% over last June and 22.9% from the previous month. Imports grew by 8.4% from May and gained 33.0% over last year, while exports rose 1.4% from the previous month and increased 23.2% over June 2009.

Below is an in-depth breakdown of the U.S. Census Merchandise Trade data released last week. This month we have highlighted 5 interesting items that we found while looking at June's data; here are the highlights:

1. How shipments arrive indicates new trade trends
2. Extreme temperatures may lead to gains in U.S. wheat exports
3. Air exports show the seasonality of trade
4. Impact of Obama’s signing law to suspend some import duties
5. Evolving Harmonized System doesn’t react fast enough to new technologies
   

Click here for Zepol's U.S. Census Merchandise Trade Data Update for June 2010

On August 9th, we completed the data for July in our U.S. Customs trade data tool, TradeIQ. With a 0.19% decrease in total shipments during the month, July ends the trend of increasing import shipments witnessed in the previous five months. Though this July's numbers failed to overtake June, we can still see a 15.52% increase over July of the previous year, indicating that 2010 import activity is rebounding from its weak numbers in 2009.

Below is a table showing port regions of the world where shipments originated:

As evidenced in the chart above, shipments from Asia decreased slightly from June, but grew 19.19% over July 2009. A look at July shipments from Asia in previous years shows us that July 2009 shipments marked a significant low time and July 2010 is a return to the strong numbers seen in July 2007 and 2008.

Below is a graph of Asia's historical July shipments, starting with July 2005:

 

The collection methods used by U.S. Customs for AMS data can lead to an overstatement of shipments for some ports, as imports and exports from Prince Rupert and Vancouver are often recorded as imports for the U.S. Moreover, the data includes shipments from empty containers, may overstate totals from transshipments, and may contain other data anomalies as well.

Zepol's U.S. Customs trade data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This indicator is the earliest data available for the previous month’s trade activity.

Mortgage rates dropped to a new low today, with a 4.49 percent average for 30-year fixed loans for the week compared to 4.52 percent from last week. These falling rates underscore the reality that despite attempts by the governement to boost the market, buyers are still cautious. The lack of activity in home purchases has caused a domino effect leading to decreased need for new construction and consequently, lagging demand for all the supplies that are used in building new homes.

Stone tile (HTS: 6902.10) is one of the many supplies used in new construction, and as demonstrated by the graph below, tile imports are still considerably low compared to pre-2008: