What other measures can U.S. companies take to enhance their competitiveness when sourcing from China?
Schroth: In addition to our trade practice, our firm specializes in U.S. Customs law and administrative law of other U.S. agencies such as the FDA, FTC, USDA, etc. Our Customs attorneys have had great success in increasing the competitiveness of our Chinese clients by setting up OPA programs (discussed above), “agency programs” (i.e., separating manufacturing operations from non-dutiable buying agency services and reducing dutiable value), “first sale” programs (i.e., using middleman trading concepts to create a dutiable value based on the first sale between manufacturer and middle man), duty preference programs (duty relief programs under multilateral treaties such as NAFTA, AGOA, CBI and other bilateral agreements with Asian trading partners) and duty savings, deferral and refund programs (such as duty drawback, use of foreign trade zones to “reverse engineer” duty rates, use of bonded warehouses to defer duty payments, etc.). In addition, our firm offers a full range of tariff class
