Customs Territory
The main customs territory of the United States includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territory of Puerto Rico, with the exception of over 200 foreign trade zones designated to encourage economic activity. The remaining insular areas are separate customs territories administered largely by local authorities:
- American Samoa
- Guam
- Northern Mariana Islands
- United States Minor Outlying Islands (mostly uninhabited)
- United States Virgin Islands
Transportation of certain living things or agricultural products may be prohibited even within a customs territory. This is enforced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and even state authorities such as the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Trade Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the words customs and/or territory:
“The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don’t count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)