NAFTZ urges FTZ Board to reconsider application approval process

In an important letter to the Foreign-Trade Zones Board, the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones recently expressed its concern on behalf of its more than 600 members about how certain applications for production authority are being considered by the board for approval. In the October 28, 2015, letter to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Secretary of the Treasury Jacob J. Lew, NAFTZ noted that the continued success of the FTZ program in promoting the retention and reshoring of manufacturing activity in the United States “may be jeopardized by inconsistencies in the Foreign-Trade Zones Board’s approval process of certain production authority applications in a handful of industries where opposition to applications has emerged.