U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued guidance implementing new country-of-smelt and country-of-cast reporting requirements for imports of certain copper articles subject to Section 232 tariffs, stemming from the April 2, 2026 proclamation Strengthening Actions Taken to Adjust Imports of Aluminum, Steel, and Copper into the United States.
The proclamation was issued under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended, 19 U.S.C. 1862, building on the earlier copper action, Proclamation 10962 of July 30, 2025. It directs importers to provide CBP the information necessary to identify the countries where the covered copper is smelted and cast, to be implemented as soon as practicable, and is published at 91 FR 18201 (CBP reference CSMS 68253075).
Functionality to accept the smelt and cast fields deploys to the ACE certification environment on July 16, 2026, and to ACE production on July 30, 2026.
While the underlying tariff modifications took effect on April 6, 2026, the new smelt-and-cast reporting requirement takes effect separately. Effective July 30, 2026, imports of certain copper articles from all countries of origin (except the U.S.) must report the primary country of smelt and country of cast, and may report the secondary country of smelt, on the entry summary line, for HTSUS 8544.42.10, 8544.42.20, 8544.42.90, and 8544.49.10; unknown values may be reported as OTH.
Reporting uses a new Importer's Additional Declaration Type Code 12 (Copper Smelt and Cast Country Detail), per ACE CATAIR Entry Summary Create/Update V109, with the Error Dictionary updated to V51 adding reject codes 869 to 873.
CBP routes technical questions to the assigned Client Representative, entry-summary questions to ESAR, and Section 232 trade-remedy questions to CBP's Trade Remedy Branch.