U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued updated guidance on reporting the country of cast and smelt for products subject to Section 232 aluminum measures when the Country of Origin is unknown.
Effective June 28, 2025, if importers do not know the country of smelt and/or cast of a product, they will report as "unknown", in lieu of reporting the ISO code for unknown smelt and cast country. When reporting unknown, importers will be required to report HTS 9903.85.67 or 9903.85.68, as applicable, and will be assessed the 200% section 232 duties on imports of aluminum from Russia.
Smelt and Cast Country Reporting Instruction:
To report the primary country of smelt, secondary country of smelt, or country of most recent cast importers must report the ISO code on aluminum articles and derivative aluminum articles on all countries subject to section 232.
Importers/Filers must report “Y” for primary country of smelt; and/or secondary country of smelt. Importers/Filers may not report “N” for both primary country of smelt and secondary country of smelt.
For the Importer's Additional Declaration Record Type '07' if either the derivative aluminum primary and/or secondary country of smelt or country of cast is unknown, report ‘UN’ (unknown) for the ISO country code. When reporting “UN,” the 200 percent Section 232 duties for Russia aluminum will be assessed on the entry summary line.
CBP said the ACE Entry Summary Create/Update CATAIR (v105) has been updated with additional technical details and reporting requirements. Also, the Entry Summary Error Dictionary has been updated to include two new errors:
- 856: UNKNOWN ALUM SMELT/CAST CTRY NOT ALLOWED
- 60B HTS REQUIRED FOR UNKNOWN SMELT/CAST CTRY
Both documents are available on the ACE CATAIR webpage in the Draft Chapters: Future Capabilities section. This effort will deploy to the Certification and Production environments on June 28, 2025.
O.T.S. will continue to monitor and provide updates as they become available. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your O.T.S. Sales Representative for more information.