CBP Announces New Risk-Based Exams for Pharma, Electronics, & Apparel, also IP and AD/CV Priorities
In testimony before Congress, Acting Assistant Commissioner Kevin McAleenan and other CBP officials stated that CBP's primary trade enforcement initiative in FY 2012 will be to enhance its intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement capacity. Another priority trade issue will be enforcing the collection of antidumping and countervailing duties. Officials stated that CBP is also initiating enhanced inspections based on risk, followed by exams, of pharmaceutical, electronic and apparel products. Members of CBP's trusted trade programs (C-TPAT, ISA, National Accounts, and CEEs) will be exempt from this effort.
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Highlights from the officials' written testimony include:
IP enforcement, including electronics. CBP's primary trade enforcement initiative in FY 2012 will be to enhance IPR enforcement capacity to support economic competitiveness. Bolstering this effort is new authority provided by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), which allows CBP, under certain circumstances, to share unredacted samples of suspected counterfeit electronic goods with right holders prior to seizure.
The new authority in the NDAA will enable CBP to work more closely with private sector partners to identify violators of intellectual property protections. CBP's FY 2013 budget request would bolster these efforts with a $10 million increase for IPR supply and distribution chain management.
AD/CV enforcement solutions. Another priority trade issue that CBP will focus its resources on in FYs 2012 and 2013 is shipments of merchandise subject to antidumping/countervailing duties (AD/CVD). CBP has created a multi-disciplinary Re-engineering Dumping (RED) Team to review the AD/CVD process and to develop enforcement solutions. This group is reviewing the entire spectrum of the AD/CVD import process from foreign place-of-manufacture to collection of final duties and identifying the threats, challenges, and vulnerabilities in each stage of the process.
Risk-based exams on pharma, electronics, apparel. To further focus its trade enforcement resources, CBP is initiating an enhanced inspection effort based on an assessment of importer risk. The initiative will protect the American consumer from importations of illegitimate and potentially dangerous products without impacting the economic benefits provided by fair and legitimate trade.
CBP will use the capabilities of its Automated Targeting System (ATS) to identify high-risk shipments of pharmaceuticals, electronics, and wearing apparel imported in the maritime, air cargo, express consignment and international mail environments. Physical examinations of these high-risk shipments will be performed to confirm intellectual property rights violations and other admissibility concerns.1
The initiative will exclude all of CBP‘s trusted trading partners (such as members of the Importer Self-Assessment (ISA) Program, Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), CBP‘s National Accounts, and participants in CBP‘s Centers of Expertise and Excellence).
1CBP officials indicated that this initiative will be part of the new Interagency Trade Enforcement Center (ITEC). (See ITT's Online Archives 12022905 for summary of the President issuing an Executive Order to establish the ITEC.)
(The CBP officials testified on February 29, 2012 before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the House Appropriations Committee. Their written statement primarily focused on border security, but also touched upon the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Air Cargo Advanced Screening (ACAS) program.
See ITT's Online Archives 12010615 for summary of the NDAA, which also includes other provisions on detecting and avoiding counterfeit electronic parts, a Berry Amendment Waiver for fire resistant rayon fiber, Central Bank of Iran sanctions, and FY 2012 authorizations for the Defense Department.)