Kerlikowske Says C-TPAT Should Provide More Benefits
CBP’s import scanning should provide more benefits for Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) participants and remain risk-based, CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said Sept. 13. “C-TPAT does need some additional work,” he said during the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America Government Affairs Conference in Washington. “If you’re a C-TPAT member and you’re valued and you’ve reached those top tiers, we need to enhance the benefits very much there.” Kerlikowske indicated that a risk-based scanning approach would dovetail with providing greater trusted trader benefits, and that such a method would be more realistic and efficient than a congressional mandate requiring all incoming U.S. cargo to be scanned via X-ray, which can be extended every two years with lawmakers’ approval. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last notified Congress of such an extension in May (see 1605310028).
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“To say that we’re going to do something 100 percent is a difficult task,” Kerlikowske said during the conference. “I know it might sound particularly pleasing to the American public. But look, I spent my career, before this job, as a police chief. No city council, no mayor, nobody ever held me to a perfect standard. No one ever said, ‘There was a crime, and now you’re not doing your job.’” He said CBP personnel will continue to work as hard as they can to detect illicit shipments 24/7. Kerlikowske called for industry to help CBP discover and execute a C-TPAT program that will bring more tangible benefits. Several U.S. traders haven’t joined C-TPAT because they weren’t sure any customs benefits would materialize, Express Association of America Executive Director Mike Mullen said this past spring (see 1604120001).
Kerlikowske also during the conference acknowledged that raising the U.S. de minimis level from $200 to $800 has caused a great deal of industry “angst,” as it presents new concerns related to the ability to ship illicit goods into this country, and he said he will soon appear before the House Ways and Means Committee to testify on CBP’s policy toward imports of child and forced labor goods. Furthermore, Kerlikowske said he’d love to do pilots that co-locate agents from the U.S., Mexico and Canada at U.S. ports of entry, but said that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration is “still new,” and that the Obama administration is still “feeling its way through” how matters will proceed at the top levels with its Canadian counterpart.