Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Trade Terms Tuesday


Welcome to Trade Terms Tuesday! Each Tuesday, we will share three trade-related terms. In order to reach out to our diverse readership, we will try to provide one for exports, one for imports, and one for logistics/transportation. This week, we continue with the H’s.

House Air Waybill (HAWB)
The house air waybill is issued by a freight forwarder for air freight shipments.Bills of lading are contracts between the owner of the goods and the carrier. The HAWB contains all the information found on an air waybill such as description, quantity and weight. This document is a contract between the shipper and freight forwarder.

Harmonized Tariff System (HTS)
The Harmonized Tariff System (HTS) is an international system for classifying goods to determine tariffs on imported goods. At the international level, the HTS contains 22 Sections with 97 chapters. The U.S. version has two additional chapters. The sections generally cover a specific industry such as food, chemicals or machinery. Although the U.S. uses 10 digits for import transactions, the HTS is identical internationally to the first six digits. Along with the country of origin, the HTS number determines the duty rate for imported merchandise. The addition of the suffixes by the U.S. allows specific data to be transmitted to Census for analysis.

HOLD WITHOUT ACTION (HWA)
A designation placed on an export license to review the exporter’s application or shipment under consideration. License applications may be held without action only in the limited circumstances described in §750.4(b) of the EAR.

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