Kelley Drye’s International Trade Practice Group has prepared a Client Advisory discussing U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (“CBP”) July 25 publication of a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register seeking to amend its regulations to replace the case-by-case “substantial transformation” test for determining the country of origin of imported merchandise with the North American Free Trade Agreement tariff shift method contained in 19 C.F.R. Part 102.

CBP has invited comments on all aspects of the proposed rules, which are due September 23, 2008.