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
A quieter week in the primary record, but one with two developments that every business selling or declaring goods into the European Union will need to act on. The Commission confirmed that product identifiers are now mandatory in customs declarations for e-commerce goods sold to EU buyers, ending the voluntary period that ran from July, and it published the 2027 edition of the Combined Nomenclature that will govern classification and duty rates from 1 January. At the World Trade Organization, the Committee on Anti-Dumping Practices completed its autumn review of members’ legislation and measures, and the Director-General used an event on the ocean economy to restate the case for the Trade Facilitation Agreement in moving perishable goods. In the United Kingdom, a countervailing duty on certain excavators from China has been suspended for one exporter while a new exporter review runs.
EU: product identifiers now mandatory for e-commerce imports
European Commission, DG TAXUD, 3 November 2026. The Commission confirmed that from 1 November 2026 product identifiers must be declared to customs for goods sold by distance sale to buyers in the EU, notably consumers. Three identifiers are required for each product in the declaration: a merchant product identifier set by the seller, marketplace or platform and unique on that platform; a non-standardised manufacturer identifier, being the manufacturer’s own model, part or style reference; and a standardised manufacturer identifier following an international standard such as an EAN, UPC or ISBN, with a specific exemption code where the product has none. The identifiers are reported by the declarant, such as the IOSS holder or a customs representative. The Commission notes that identifiers could be provided voluntarily without penalty from 1 July 2026, that the requirement is now mandatory and enforced, and that more comprehensive product data requirements will follow in July 2028 once the EU Customs Data Hub for e-commerce is deployed.
What it means. This is the first point at which the EU’s e-commerce reform reaches into the product master data of sellers and platforms rather than the duty calculation alone. The practical burden falls on the party assembling the declaration data, usually a postal or express operator or a customs representative acting for an IOSS registrant, who can only declare identifiers that the seller or platform has captured upstream. Businesses selling into the EU should confirm that their product catalogues carry all three identifiers, or a valid exemption code, at the stock-keeping-unit level and that these flow through to whoever lodges the declaration. For administrations, the measure is a worked example of using data that already exists in commercial systems to target product-safety risk at scale, and the staged approach, voluntary first, enforced later, with richer data to follow when the central platform is ready, is a sequencing model worth noting.
EU: 2027 Combined Nomenclature published
European Commission, DG TAXUD, 30 October 2026. The Commission published the 2027 version of the Combined Nomenclature as Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/2163 in the L series of the Official Journal on 30 October 2026, to apply from 1 January 2027. The Combined Nomenclature, established by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87, is the basis for declaring goods on import and export and for intra-EU trade statistics, and it determines the applicable customs duty rate and the statistical treatment of goods.
What it means. The annual nomenclature update is routine, which is precisely why it is missed. Any code change in a product’s heading or subheading alters duty, licensing, statistical and in some cases trade-remedy treatment from the first day of January, and classification databases, enterprise systems and broker master files need to be reconciled against the new text before then. Importers and exporters should run their active commodity codes against the 2027 regulation now, prioritising goods under preferential origin claims, tariff suspensions and quotas, where a code change can also disturb the legal basis of the preference. Administrations whose tariffs are aligned to or derived from the EU nomenclature should check that their own 2027 tariff instruments are published in time to avoid a gap between the two.
WTO: anti-dumping committee completes autumn review
World Trade Organization, 27 October 2026. The Committee on Anti-Dumping Practices met to review new legislative notifications from Comoros and Tajikistan and to continue its review of legislation notified by the European Union, Liberia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and the Solomon Islands. Delegations questioned the semi-annual reports of fifteen members, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States. Forty-five members reported anti-dumping actions for the period 1 January to 30 June 2026, eleven reported none, and forty-eight have made one-time notifications that they have no authority to investigate. The Committee adopted its 2026 annual report to the Council for Trade in Goods and will next meet in the weeks of 26 April and 25 October 2027.
What it means. The semi-annual reports are the most complete public register of where anti-dumping activity is concentrating, and the questions members put to one another signal which measures are likely to be challenged. For businesses, the value is in the reports themselves: a trader with exposure to steel, chemicals, aluminium or glass products should read the reports of its principal markets for the first half of 2026 as an early indicator of the measures and registrations that will reach customs declarations in the months ahead. For administrations that have notified they have no investigating authority, the review is a reminder that trade-remedy capacity is a legitimate part of a customs and trade framework, and one that several smaller members are now building.
UK: countervailing duty on certain excavators suspended for one exporter
Department for Business and Trade, Trade remedies notice 2026/29, 15 October 2026. The Secretary of State published a notice suspending collection of the countervailing duty imposed by Trade remedies notice 2025/11 on certain tracked excavators originating from China, commodity code 8429 5210 00, where the goods are produced by Liebherr Machinery (Dalian) Co., Ltd. under additional code 8A77. The suspension applies from 15 October 2026 until the new exporter review concludes or is terminated. The goods covered are self-propelled track-laying excavators with a 360-degree revolving superstructure and an operating weight of 11 tonnes or more but less than 80 tonnes.
What it means. A new exporter review is the mechanism by which a producer that did not export during the original investigation period can obtain its own duty rate rather than the residual rate applied to all other exporters. The suspension means that, for this exporter and this code, the countervailing duty is not collected while the review runs, but the anti-dumping duty on the same goods is unaffected and the review may end with a duty being reinstated. Importers of these machines should confirm the additional code used at declaration and should budget for the possibility of a duty being reimposed at the conclusion of the review. The notice is also a reminder that UK trade remedies now move on their own timetable, distinct from the EU measures they were carried over from.
WTO: Director-General on trade and the ocean economy
World Trade Organization, 5 November 2026. The Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, gave the keynote at an event on trade, biodiversity and the ocean economy co-organised by Belgium, Fiji and Portugal. She put the ocean economy at US$ 2.6 trillion, supporting around 133 million jobs, and noted that more than 80 per cent of globally traded goods travel by sea and that 72 per cent of world goods trade still takes place on most-favoured-nation terms. She pointed to the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, in force since September 2025, which prohibits subsidies to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, to fishing of overfished stocks and to fishing on the unregulated high seas, and urged members to complete the remaining negotiations. She cited the Trade Facilitation Agreement as supporting the rapid cross-border movement of perishable goods.
What it means. The customs content here is in the detail rather than the headline. The Fisheries Subsidies Agreement creates notification and transparency obligations that will increasingly be tested against what moves across borders, and customs data on fish and fishery products is one of the few independent records available to verify them. The reference to perishable goods points to Article 7.9 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement, which requires members to release perishables within the shortest possible time and to give them appropriate priority. Exporters of perishable products who face delays should be aware that this is a treaty obligation of the importing member, and administrations reviewing their release procedures should treat perishables handling as a measurable commitment rather than a service aspiration.
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.