The U.S. Senate passed the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (H.R. 4380) containing several duty suspensions across many sporting goods categories. Senate approval, which came via Unanimous Consent procedures, followed last week's overwhelming passage (378-43) by the U.S. House of Representatives. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

As reported, the bill restores duty relief for a cornucopia of sporting goods, including bicycle parts, outdoor footwear, snow sports equipment, volleyballs, rubber basketballs, leather basketballs, synthetic basketballs, and golf bags that expired on Jan. 1, 2010. The bill also included several duty suspensions on waterproof breathable footwear, ski and snowboard equipment and footwear. Bicycle companies will benefit from lower tariffs on tubing, speedometers, road and hydraulic disc brakes and certain rims and cranks.

The duty suspension/reduction provisions will take effect 15 days after enactment, and will remain in effect until December 31, 2012. 

Extensions of expired duty suspension provisions will be retroactive to January 1, 2010, the date on which they expired, provided requests for retroactive treatment are filed with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within 180 days of enactment and include information enabling CBP to locate or reconstruct the entry.

“SGMA is pleased that Congress has taken action on these outdated duties,” said Bill Sells, SGMA”s vice president of governmental relations.  “The duty relief provided for basketballs, volleyballs and golf bags will preserve U.S. jobs and help reduce consumer prices in difficult economic times.  Actions like this benefit everyone and they are the right approach to reinvigorating our economy.”

As reported earlier by SGMA, H.R. 4380 contains provisions to suspend or reduce the applicable U.S. duties on the following sporting goods:


  • volleyballs (Sec. 3001(a)(66)) – continues duty suspension at Free
  • leather basketballs (Sec. 3001(a)(67)) – continues duty suspension at Free
  • golf bag bodies (Sec. 3001(b)(11)) – modifies the product description contained in the prior duty suspension provision to ensure that all intended products are appropriately covered, and reduces the duty from 7% to 1.5%.
  • rubber basketballs (Sec. 3001(b)29)) – extends and further reduces the rate of duty from 1.5% to 0.7%
  • basketballs of other materials (Sec. 3001(b)(23)) – changes the reduced rate of duty from 0.9% to 1.1%.

When the previous duty relief lapsed on January 1, 2010, duties on volleyballs and basketballs reverted back to the 2006 duty rate of 4.8 percent.

Congressional leaders hope to take up a second tranche of duty suspension provisions as early as September.  This second tranche will include “new” duty suspension provisions, i.e., any duty suspensions introduced in this Congress that are not extensions of existing duty suspension provisions and which had not been introduced in the House during the last Congress.