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Congress Creeps Toward Duty Suspensions for Certain Sporting Goods

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) has not yet fully extracted the wrench he threw earlier into the miscellaneous tariff bill (MTB) works.  Notwithstanding the early September announcement of additional MTB lobbying disclosure requirements as insisted on by Sen. Grassley and as reported earlier by SGMA, the senator reportedly is questioning why the new requirements were published by the House Clerk in a form other than formal guidelines.  These questions are delaying the Finance Committee’s issuance of its advisory inviting senators to introduce their duty suspension bills, an action that the House Ways & Means Committee insists on seeing before moving forward with its MTB process.

As reported, duty suspension provisions of interest to many SGMA members are at stake.  These include bills introduced during the last Congress and being considered for inclusion in the House MTB that would create new duty suspension provisions for certain golf club components (110th-H.R. 2362), stick and golf umbrellas (110th-H.R. 2866) and certain ski equipment (110th-H.R. 4503), as well as proposals to extend existing suspensions on basketballs, volleyballs and golf bags.

POSTED- September 18, 2009