To offer regional businesses another tool for tariff relief, the City of Bangor is promoting its foreign trade zone as a possible solution.

FTZs have been around since the 1930s and offer a way to defer, minimize, or avoid tariffs altogether.

By importing a good into an FTZ, a business can defer paying tariffs until the good enters the U.S. marketplace. This strategy can give a business more control over cash flow by paying tariffs incrementally rather than all at once, Biguita Hernandez-Smith, Bangor’s economic development director, says.