Tax & Trade Blog

In an interesting customs case continuing the Canada Border Service Agency’s (“CBSA”) assault on toy replica firearms, the Federal Court of Appeal (“FCA”) pointed out that allegations of bias leveled at the CBSA and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (“CITT”) during the appeal process are serious and come with a “correspondingly heavy burden on the party alleging bias to prove the allegations”.  This is not good news for taxpayers and importers who often come to us feeling that the CBSA or the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) has pre-judged their particular appeals, with the end-result in mind.

On January 1, 2025, Canada is set to make changes to its to unilateral tariff programs for imports under the Customs Tariff.  The changes include several beneficiary countries being graduated from the General Preferential Tariff (“GPT”) and Least Developed Country Tariff (“LDCT”) programs, and the introduction of a General Preferential Tariff Plus Program (“GPTP”) that will come into force at a later date.

Background

Canada’s customs system operates on the basis of preferential tariffs, in which countries are assigned a particular tariff treatment.  The tariff treatment assigned to a country is used (in conjunction with the HS Code) to determine the rate of duty imposed on a particular good imported into Canada from that country.

On October 18, 2024, the Department of Finance launched its remission process to allow Canadian businesses to apply for relief or refund from surtaxes levied at Chinese products in an effort to level the playing field for Canadian businesses and workers.  Eligible Canadian businesses can apply to the Minister of Finance and present their plea on how the surtax policies have unduly burdened their business operations.

Businesses that request remission prior to November 8, 2024, will receive priority in application processing, while subsequent submissions will be processed thereafter in the usual course.

On October 1, 2024, the Canadian government released the final list of which goods will be subject to the 25% surtax on steel and aluminium products coming from the People’s Republic of China effective October 22, 2024 (the “Final List”).  

The Final List is rather broad, and includes many items of iron, steel, or aluminum that could be used by manufacturers across various industries, including ingots, flat-rolled coils, bars and rods, extrusion shapes and sections, tubes pipes and hollow profiles, etc.

On August 26, 2024, the Canadian government announced a series of new measures to support Canadian workers in an effort to enhance the country’s  electrical vehicle (“EV”) industry in domestic, North American, and global markets. 

This follows a 30 day consultation period in July addressing allegedly unfair Chinese EV trade practices, as we previously reported here, and the imposition of similar trade remedies by the EU and the US.