The 24-hour warning strikes at six German North Sea ports, Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Emden, and Brake, ran from Monday night through Tuesday and produced a result. ZDS, the employers' association, announced today it will return to negotiations with ver.di next Monday and Tuesday in Hamburg. Ver.di's lead negotiator accepted, saying plainly the strikes had an effect.

On August 13, President Trump signed a proclamation imposing Section 232 tariffs on unmanned aircraft systems and their components, effective September 3. The rate depends on specific product characteristics: drones over 25 kilograms maximum takeoff weight, or any drone with thermal imaging capability, face 100%. Drones at or under 25 kilograms without thermal imaging face 25%. Products of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the EU, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are capped at 15%; UK products at 10%.

Effective August 5, 2026, CBP requires electronic payment through ACH for any duty, tax, or fee increase resulting from a Post Summary Correction. Checks and cash are no longer accepted, superseding guidance in place since 2017 that allowed payment at the port of entry. The change was formally announced in a July 6 Federal Register notice, and CBP issued a reminder via CSMS on August 3.

BIS published a Federal Register notice on August 6 proposing to bring 14 additional derivative articles within the scope of Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum, and copper. Comments are due August 27, a short window if your products are affected. The proposed categories include aluminum powder, brass-wind instruments and parts, welding machine parts, floor safes, certain electric conductor cables, fire extinguishers, heat exchange unit parts, hydraulic engine and motor parts, certain cranes and lifting equipment, several trailer categories, and certain filled steel containers. Most would carry a 25% rate, with cranes, lifting frames, straddle carriers, and trailers at 15%.

NCBFAA sent CBP a formal letter responding to Executive Order 14411, the customs enforcement order signed June 3. The letter is not opposition. NCBFAA President Karen Damon was clear that the brokerage community supports the order and sees customs brokers as having a critical role in implementing it. What the letter offers instead is a set of specific questions and recommendations on how the rules should work in practice.

On July 20, President Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, each imposing an additional 50% duty on a category of Canadian-origin goods: dairy, alcoholic beverages, and motor vehicles. All three take effect August 19. Two details are worth understanding beyond the headline categories.

On July 1, the United States declined to renew USMCA at its first mandatory joint review. USTR Greer's statement was blunt: "The United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form. As a result, the USMCA is not renewed." The headlines that followed were alarming and mostly missed the point.

CBP deploys a new "Inactive for Entry Purposes" status in ACE on July 16, automatically deactivating any Importer of Record that has not filed an entry in 366 days. An account in that status cannot transmit Cargo Release or Entry Summary transactions. It reads like a maintenance notice, and it is not one.

CBP issued updated global guidance for international mail on July 6, and it lays out the mechanics the earlier announcements left vague. The de minimis suspension for mail was already known. What is new is the operating manual: to use the new postal informal entry process that takes effect July 24, you need the right to make entry, a bond on file in ACE eBond, and a Pay.gov account for paying duties by ACH debit, with a monthly spreadsheet of fourteen data fields per shipment due by the seventh of the following month.

Earlier this year, the consensus forecast for 2026 container shipping pointed to a soft market: fleet overcapacity, moderate demand, and falling rates. Shanghai to Los Angeles was quoted between $1,200 and $1,800 per FEU in the spring, and many importers set annual freight budgets on that basis. Last week the same lane reached $6,349, Shanghai to New York hit $7,902, the Drewry index rose 9% in a week, and HMM announced a $3,000 peak season surcharge effective July 15.

On June 15, the Supreme Court declined to hear HMTX Industries v. United States, the test case challenging the Section 301 tariffs on List 3 and List 4A goods from China. No comment, no reasoning, just a denial. That ends an eight-year fight. The tariffs stand, no refunds will come through this case, and the 3,500-plus related cases waiting at the Court of International Trade will likely be dismissed.

Today brought the biggest development in the Strait of Hormuz crisis since February. The White House confirmed that U.S. and Iranian negotiators reached agreement on a Memorandum of Understanding. The reported terms are real and specific: a 60-day ceasefire extension, unrestricted passage through the strait, removal of Iranian mines within 30 days, the U.S. easing its blockade in parallel, and 60 days of nuclear talks including disposal of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile. If it holds, it is the path out of three months of closure.

CBP refreshed the CAPE FAQ on May 20 and rolled out a modernized ACE Portal account application. The FAQ updates are getting most of the coverage. The thing that actually solves a real problem for importers is hidden in the ACE Portal news, and almost nobody is talking about it.

In March, the administration tried to fix the Strait of Hormuz with money. Insurers had walked away, ships were anchored, and the reasoning was that coverage was the missing piece. So the government stood up a war-risk reinsurance facility, eventually sized at up to $40 billion, to cover vessels making the transit. Two months on, it has written nothing. A DFC official confirmed this week there are no active policies. Zero.

The first IEEPA refund payments started landing in importer bank accounts a week ago, exactly on the timeline CBP committed to in court. After two months of waiting, the system is working. But the rollout is also surfacing problems that matter for any importer still in the queue. The first-validation pass rate is sitting at 63%, meaning one in three declarations is getting returned. The most common reasons are outdated ACE credentials, ACH banking information entered in the wrong module, and entry number formatting errors.

MSC's first Europe-to-Gulf land bridge service departed Antwerp this week, routing cargo through the Suez Canal to Jeddah, then loading it onto trucks for an 800-mile haul across the Arabian Peninsula to Dammam. Hapag-Lloyd built similar overland corridors in March. Other carriers are following. Container lines do not invest in 800-mile trucking corridors as stopgaps. They build them when they have concluded the alternative — Hormuz reopening on a usable timeline — is not coming back.

On April 27, Commerce added a new HTSUS subheading, 9903.82.01, that closes a real gap in the April 2 Section 232 proclamation. The code carries a 0% duty rate and applies retroactively to April 6. It covers products classified under HTSUS Chapters 72, 73, 74, and 76 that do not actually contain steel, aluminum, or copper — the cases where the existing low-content exemption did not reach because of how the original proclamation language was written.

CAPE has been live for eight days. CBP filed its first formal progress report to the Court of International Trade on Monday, and the numbers are concrete enough to draw real conclusions. About 21% of all entries that paid IEEPA duties have been accepted into the system and had the duties removed. About 3% have made it all the way through to the refund stage. CBP told the court it expects the first actual refunds to land around May 11.

Iran has put a new proposal on the table: reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its naval blockade and ends the war, with nuclear talks pushed to a separate later track. Trump cancelled the Pakistan meeting over the weekend. Rubio publicly rejected the framing on Monday. Brent crude crossed $112 a barrel on Tuesday and U.S. gas is averaging $4.10 a gallon.

This is the most movement in the negotiations since Islamabad failed on April 11. It is also still very much stuck. Hormuz transit rebounded to 19 vessels on April 25, U.S. enforcement is expanding into open-sea operations beyond the strait, and the Pentagon's six-month mine clearance estimate remains the timeline that actually governs freight planning. Cape of Good Hope routing is the baseline through year-end. Here is what changed this week and what to watch next.

CAPE has been live since Monday. Declarations are being submitted and processed, the day-one glitches are being worked through, and the 80-day window on liquidated entries keeps running. Three days in, patterns are emerging in how the system is actually behaving — and a few of them will cost people money if they are not paying attention.