Trade & Customs Watch is our weekly briefing on the customs, tariff and trade-regulatory developments that matter to businesses moving goods across borders and to the administrations that control them. Each item is drawn from the primary record and linked to it, with a short note on what it means in practice.
The week in brief
The largest development of the month is European: the Council of the EU gave its final approval on 3 September to the reform of the Union Customs Code, which creates an EU Customs Authority in Lille, a single EU customs data hub, and a new liability model for e-commerce imports, with the €150 duty exemption removed and an EU-wide handling fee on small parcels due by 1 November 2026. In the United States, the continuing appropriations act signed on 2 September extends the African Growth and Opportunity Act to 31 December 2028. In the United Kingdom, HMRC imposed provisional anti-dumping duties of between 24.65% and 52.97% on glass containers from China, updated the implementation notices for the steel trade measure, and saw two customs consultations close, on modernising the customs regime and on mandatory registration of customs intermediaries, without a government response as yet. The European Commission marked five years of the VAT e-commerce package with figures showing more than €125 billion collected, and the World Customs Organization’s Secretary General used an official visit to Kazakhstan to position the WCO Data Model and SAFE Framework as the common language for a digital Middle Corridor.
EU customs reform: Council gives final approval to the new Union Customs Code
Council of the European Union, 3 September 2026. The Council adopted the reform of the EU customs framework, described in its press release as the most comprehensive of its kind in decades. The reform establishes a decentralised EU Customs Authority, located in Lille and due to begin operations in 2027, and an EU customs data hub that will become the single platform through which importers and exporters interact with customs across the Union. On e-commerce, non-EU platforms selling into the EU will be treated as the importer of the goods and will be responsible for customs formalities and duty payment; the historical duty exemption for consignments valued below €150 is removed; and an EU-wide handling fee on small parcels is to be introduced by 1 November 2026. Use of the data hub becomes mandatory for e-commerce businesses from 1 July 2028 and for all traders from 1 March 2034. The Council’s release noted that the European Parliament was expected to give its approval later in September. Separately, the Parliament’s own research service recorded that the file extending the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to downstream goods, on which the Commission proposed 180 additional products and the Environment Committee 457, was scheduled for Parliament’s position at the September plenary, after which negotiations with the Council follow.
What it means. For businesses, the immediate items are the e-commerce ones: any non-EU marketplace or platform selling to EU consumers should plan now for importer status, for duty on every consignment regardless of value, and for a per-parcel handling fee from the autumn, and should check the Official Journal text for the operative dates rather than relying on summaries, which currently differ. For everyone else the horizon is longer but the direction is fixed: national declaration systems give way to one central data hub, with 2028 and 2034 as the mandatory milestones, so any investment in EU declaration software or data architecture should be made with the hub, not the current national systems, as the end state. For administrations outside the EU, the reform is the clearest current statement of where large-economy customs is heading: a single data layer, supply-chain data supplied once and reused, and liability placed on the platform rather than the consumer. Single-window and customs-management programmes elsewhere will increasingly be judged against that model.
United States: AGOA extended to the end of 2028
United States Congress and White House, 1 and 2 September 2026. The Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027 (H.R. 6500), whose official summary states that it extends through 31 December 2028 the trade preferences providing duty-free access to the US market for most exports from eligible sub-Saharan African countries, was agreed by the House on 1 September and signed into law on 2 September 2026. This follows the short renewal earlier in the year, which had restored the programme retroactively to its lapse on 30 September 2025 and was due to expire on 31 December 2026.
What it means. Exporters in eligible countries, and the US importers who buy from them, now have a little over two years of certainty rather than three months. That is enough to price and place orders for 2027 and 2028 seasons, but it is not the long-term reauthorisation that the apparel and agricultural sectors have sought, and sourcing decisions with a longer payback should still treat 2028 as a planning horizon rather than a settled fact. Reauthorisation of the programme does not by itself change any country’s eligibility; suspended countries remain suspended until a separate determination is made. Importers should also note that the extension restates the programme’s origin and documentation rules rather than relaxing them, so origin evidence, including for the third-country fabric provisions used by the apparel sector, remains the point at which claims are tested.
United Kingdom: provisional anti-dumping duties on glass containers from China, and steel measure notices updated
HMRC, 8 September 2026. Trade Remedies Notice 2026/25 imposes provisional anti-dumping duties, effective 9 September 2026, on carboys, bottles, flasks, jars, pots, phials, preserving jars and similar glass containers used for the conveyance or packing of goods, classified under fifteen commodity codes within heading 7010 90 and originating in China. Rates range from 24.65% to 52.97% depending on the exporter, with the residual rate of 52.97% applying where a valid commercial invoice with the required producer declaration is not presented. Ampoules, containers of tubular glass, containers of 2.5 litres or more and standalone closures are excluded. The provisional measure runs for a maximum of six months or until definitive measures take effect, and the duty must be secured by bank guarantee, bond or cash deposit. On the same day HMRC updated its implementation notifications for the UK steel trade measure, confirming that goods ordered under contracts dated before 14 March 2026 and imported between 1 July and 30 September 2026 are exempt from the 50% out-of-quota duty and do not count against the quarter’s quota, that quotas are allocated first come, first served and become critical at 90% allocation, and that Ukrainian-origin steel remains outside the measure under the existing preferential arrangements.
What it means. Importers of glass packaging from China face an immediate cash-flow decision: the provisional duty must be secured on every entry from 9 September, and the difference between the co-operating exporter rates and the residual rate is large enough that the producer declaration on the commercial invoice is now a document worth checking before shipment rather than at clearance. Buyers whose packaging is sourced through intermediaries should establish which producer actually made the goods. On steel, the transitional exemption expires with the September import window, so shipments arriving from 1 October under pre-March contracts will need quota or will pay the out-of-quota rate, and the 90% critical threshold means late-quarter arrivals carry the greater risk of a refused claim. The broader pattern is that UK trade-remedy activity is accelerating in the second half of 2026, and businesses with China-origin or steel-adjacent import exposure should be tracking the Trade Remedies Authority’s case list, not only the notices already in force.
United Kingdom: two customs consultations close without a response yet
HMRC and HM Treasury, closed 15 and 21 September 2026. The call for evidence on modernising the UK customs regime, published on 23 June, closed on 15 September. It asked how digitalised trading practices are changing what businesses need from the customs system, whether customs data requirements should draw more directly on commercial systems rather than separate declarations, whether the UK’s flexible approach to authorisations remains attractive and how trust should be managed in a digital regime, and how the UK compares internationally. HMRC’s consultation on mandatory registration for customs intermediaries, also published on 23 June, closed at 11:59pm on 21 September. It sought views on the scope of registration, which intermediaries should be included or exempt, the mandatory requirements and compliance checks that should attach to registration, and enforcement. No summary of responses or government response has yet been published for either.
What it means. The two exercises are best read together. One asks whether the UK should move from declarations towards data drawn from traders’ own systems and whether the authorisation model built on inherited EU structures should be rethought; the other asks whether the intermediaries who file most declarations should be regulated. Together they describe a possible customs regime in which trusted data, trusted traders and registered intermediaries carry more of the compliance load and the border less of it. Businesses that rely on brokers should expect that registration, when it comes, will change what their brokers must demonstrate and may change fees and contract terms. Administrations elsewhere considering broker licensing will find the UK approach instructive: define what registration requires and consult on scope, compliance checks and enforcement before regulating the sector. The next milestone is the government response, which is the document to watch.
European Commission: five years of the VAT e-commerce package
Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, 3 September 2026. The Commission reported that the One Stop Shop and Import One Stop Shop schemes introduced in July 2021 have collected more than €125 billion in VAT, including €38 billion in 2025, a 17% increase on the previous year, with more than 193,000 businesses registered under the simplified schemes by the end of 2025. It stated that the VAT in the Digital Age package adopted in 2025 will extend the One Stop Shop to further business-to-consumer transactions, introduce a special scheme for transfers of own goods and move towards a single VAT registration in the EU.
What it means. The figures matter less for their size than for what they signal: the EU regards single registration and platform-based collection as a success and is extending the model, and the customs reform approved this month applies the same logic to duty. Businesses selling into the EU from outside should expect VAT and customs obligations to converge on the platform or the deemed importer, with one registration and one data submission in place of twenty-seven national procedures. Administrations designing import VAT or GST collection for low-value consignments now have five years of evidence that a simplified, registration-based scheme can raise substantial revenue without border-by-border assessment, which is the strongest available argument for that design over parcel-level collection at the frontier.
World Customs Organization: digitalisation and the Middle Corridor in Kazakhstan
World Customs Organization, 14 September 2026. The WCO reported on Secretary General Ian Saunders’s official visit to Kazakhstan, where he met the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Chairman of the State Revenue Committee. The Secretary General commended Kazakhstan’s KEDEN system, which provides electronic declaration, advance information and digital transit, affirmed the WCO’s support for the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor, and presented the WCO Data Model and the SAFE Framework of Standards as the common language needed for the end-to-end digital corridor Kazakhstan envisages.
What it means. The practical point for administrations is the test being applied: a national system is judged not on whether it works domestically but on whether its data can be exchanged, unchanged, with the customs administrations at either end of a corridor. That requires the WCO Data Model as the data standard and the SAFE Framework, including mutual recognition of trusted traders, as the control framework. Single-window and transit programmes that build to national specifications first and map to international standards later tend to find the mapping is the expensive part. For businesses moving goods along the Middle Corridor, the direction of travel is towards advance electronic data and digital transit documents across several jurisdictions, which rewards those whose own systems can already produce Data Model-conformant information.
Trade & Customs Watch is compiled from primary sources: HMRC, the Department for Business and Trade, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, the World Customs Organization and national customs administrations. Items are summarised; the linked record is authoritative. Commentary is our own and is general in nature, not advice on any particular transaction. To discuss what any of these developments means for your business or administration, contact us.