Importers and exporters are not strangers to the HTSUS updates issued by the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) throughout the calendar year, with larger revisions generally issued in July and January. However, every five years, the World Customs Organization (WCO) publishes changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) at the international level. These larger changes affect all adherents to “The International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System” at the six-digit level of the HTS. In turn, each country must then publish its own version of the HTS, which may include additional digits that are more specific in regard to certain commodities.
In preparation for implementing the 2022 update from the WCO, the ITC has published its Recommended Modifications in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule on their website. For new HTS and article descriptions, see “Appendix B Recommended Modifications to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule” (pages 21 – 218). For the HTS table, see “Appendix D Concordance Table, Sorted by Current HTS Subheading Number” (pages 261 -301).
In order to implement these modifications, a final version of the changes must be submitted to the White House, which will issue a presidential proclamation and publish the changes in the Federal Register. Once this has occurred, the changes to the HTSUS will go into effect in 30 days.
The WCO has also published its 2022 nomenclature of the HTS and accompanying correlation table on its website. While these are not the official HTSUS numbers for 2022, importers and exporters may find them helpful.