New requirements to state “country of mining” leave a lot of unanswered questions.
The diamond industry was in mild shock when news came through of the latest US import requirements. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it would be obliging companies to state the “country of mining” when importing diamonds from April 2025. This puts a burden on the trade to step up its traceability efforts.
The new rules emerged quietly in stages. On October 22, 2024, CBP gave 60 days’ notice about the plan and requested comments by December 23. Few in the industry even saw this. Then the federal agency published a Trade User Information Notice, labeled “Last updated: January 14, 2025.” It distributed this in a bulletin on January 23. Shipping company Malca-Amit sent a letter to customers about the update around a week ago. It seems that it was this letter that got the trade’s attention.
The details remain unclear. The directive does not mention carat sizes, though the US’s ban on Russian diamonds has applied to 0.50-carat and larger diamonds since September 1, 2024. The Malca-Amit letter, as seen by Rapaport News, states that the change “would apply for all jewelry shipments containing diamonds and all loose diamonds [weighing 0.50 carats] and above,” but this “can be subject to change by CBP.”
For the rest of this article: https://rapaport.com/analysis/unclear-us-diamond-rules-signal-move-to-traceability/