April 25,2006

Grassley, Baucus Solicit Input for Miscellaneous Tariff Bill

WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee on Finance, and Sen.
Max Baucus, ranking member, have invited senators to submit items for possible inclusion in a
miscellaneous tariff bill. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, the senators emphad that items to be
considered must, in accordance with the long-running practice, meet specific criteria. Namely, they
must be non-controversial and must amount to less than $500,000 in annual lost revenue. The last
miscellaneous tariff bill took two Congresses to complete because some senators departed from the
usual criteria.

The text of the Grassley-Baucus “Dear Colleague” letter follows.

April 21, 2006

Miscellaneous Tariff Bill Deadline to Introduce Bills – May 26, 2006

Dear Colleague:

The Senate Finance Committee is initiating the process of compiling a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill
(MTB). Senators who are interested in introducing bills for potential inclusion in the MTB should
do so by May 26, 2006.

The MTB is comprised of numerous non-controversial tariff bills introduced by various Senators.
The MTB will provide an opportunity to temporarily eliminate or reduce duties on narrowly defined
products that are imported into the United States and to liquidate or reliquidate certain duty entries
that were incorrectly classified by the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Duty
suspension bills, which account for the majority of the provisions that are included in the MTB,
reduce input costs for U.S. businesses and thus ultimately increase the competitiveness of their
products.

Since the early 1980s, the Finance Committee has sought to report an MTB each Congress.
Unfortunately, the last MTB – which was signed into law in 2004 – took two Congresses to
complete. This was because the regular order for assembling the bill broke down. Namely, some
Senators insisted on the inclusion of provisions in the MTB even though those provisions did not
meet each of the criteria for including a bill in the MTB.

We will be very clear. With this announcement of the initiation of the MTB process, we are also
announcing a return to regular order. We are pledging to work together to resist any efforts to include
provisions in the MTB that do not meet the following criteria.

First and foremost, in order to be included in the MTB, a bill must be non-controversial. A bill will
be controversial if it is objected to by a domestic producer of the product for which the duty
reduction is being sought. Because the MTB is passed by unanimous consent, its provisions must
be non-controversial. Secondly, the cost for each bill must amount to less than $500,000 of lost
revenue per year.

All provisions in the MTB must have been introduced as stand-alone bills by May 26 and should
include the following information: (1) a precise description of the imported product (chemical
products should be described by their chemical name – not their trade name – and should have a
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) registry number in the description); and (2) the correct 8-digit
Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) number. Liquidation and reliquidation bills must include the date
of entry and the 11-digit entry number. This information can be very technical. Members should
contact the International Trade Commission (ITC) or CBP prior to introduction to make sure that the
bill text is technically correct.

During the MTB process, we anticipate that the Senate Legislative Counsel will be busy working on
numerous tariff bills. The House passed an MTB – H.R. 4944 – on March 15, and in order to reduce
the workload of the Legislative Counsel, if the bill you are seeking to introduce is included in the
House MTB – or has companion legislation introduced in the House of Representative yet was not
included in the House MTB – please reference the corresponding bill section number or the H.R.
number, respectively, when contacting the Senate Legislative Counsel.

Soon after the deadline for introduction (May 26), the Finance Committee will issue a press release
seeking public comments on provisions for which inclusion in the MTB is being sought.
Simultaneously, the ITC will review the product description and tariff classification in each of the
bills and solicit comments from industry on the bills. The ITC will also report on any domestic
opposition to a bill and will provide a duty loss estimate for each bill. The ITC’s duty loss estimates
will be used by the Congressional Budget Office to score each bill. Information obtained by the
Finance Committee and the ITC through this process will be taken into consideration when
assembling a final MTB package.

If you have questions on the MTB process, please contact {staff name deleted} or {staff name
deleted}. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in helping to develop this legislation.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Grassley
Chairman

Max Baucus
Ranking Member

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