One of the Beyond the Border Action Plan initiative's commitment is to “bring greater public transparency and accountability to the application of border fees and charges, with a view to reducing costs to business and promoting trade competitiveness.”
As a first step towards fulfilling this commitment, the governments of the United States and Canada have each developed inventories of mandatory, trade-related fees charged by either federal government on the movement of goods across the Canada-U.S. border.
For the 2010-2011 fiscal period Canada collected $34,191,797 in fees, and the U.S. $230,200,384. That was 0.017% of all imports for Canada, and 0.077% for the U.S.
This report is available at http://cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/newsroom/highlights/border_fee_inventory.ctt/border_fee_inventory.pdf.
The governments of the United States and Canada are now moving forward with the next phase of this Beyond the Border Action Plan initiative: commissioning a third party contractor to conduct an economic impact assessment of border fees and then publishing a joint report on border fees. It is expected that this work will be completed by spring 2014.
Topic(s)
International Trade and Border Management
Information source
Canadian News Channel
Disclaimer
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