Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation

This rule amends U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations to adjust for inflation the amounts that CBP can assess as civil monetary penalties for the following three violations-- transporting passengers between coastwise points in the United States by a non-coastwise qualified vessel; towing a vessel between coastwise points in the United States by a non-coastwise qualified vessel; and dealing in or using an empty stamped imported liquor container after it has already been used once. These adjustments are being made in in accordance with the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (2015 Act) which was enacted on November 2, 2015. Other CBP civil penalty amounts were adjusted pursuant to this 2015 Act in previously published rule documents published in the Federal Register on July 1, 2016, and January 27, 2017, but the adjustments for these three civil penalties were inadvertently left out of those documents.