Effective November 29, 2009, the Postal Service™ is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, International Mail Manual (IMM®) subchapter 520 to provide additional standards for items sent internationally to comply with specific Foreign Trade Regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
Consistent with the article titled “IMM Revision: Updated U.S. Census Requirements When Sending an International Shipment” in Postal Bulletin 22269 (10-8-09, pages 62–67), which announced the new standards for international shipments, we are further revising the IMM to include minor updates brought to our attention by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. These changes include the following:
a. We changed the term “State Sponsors of Terrorism” to “terrorist-supporting countries” throughout.
b. We clarified text to indicate that Iran and Syria are not eligible to receive “gift parcels or humanitarian donations” under the Commerce Department’s rules.
c. For clarity, we changed the acronym “AES” to “Automated Export System” except when included with the term “AES Downtime Citation.”
d. We clarified that there are two methods for filing electronic export information — in addition to the previously mentioned method of filing through AESDirect, we’ve also noted that mailers can file through the U.S. Census Bureau’s Automated Export System.
e. Where appropriate, we refer readers to IMM 530 to obtain additional information about export licenses. (Revisions to IMM 530 are published in this issue of the Postal Bulletin in the article titled “IMM Revision: Export Licensing Requirements — Update,” pages 1–3.)
f. In 524.1, we clarified Example 2 to indicate that, although an electronic filing might not be required, Exemption and Exclusion Legend “NOEEI 30.37(a)” would apply.
We will incorporate these revisions into the next printed version of the IMM and into the monthly update of the online IMM, which is available via Postal Explorer® at http://pe.usps.com.
— Mailing Standards, Pricing, 11-5-09
