COAC Calls for Improvements to ACE Export Manifest Pilot, Simplified AES Exemption Codes
CBP should develop “written pilot policies and procedures” for its ACE export manifest pilots and distribute them to those interested in pilot participation, said the The Customs Commercial Operations Advisory Committee's export subcommittee in recommendations adopted at the group's Nov. 14 meeting in Washington. CBP’s current ACE pilot processes lack “process, policy and technical documentation," especially for timelines, "response expectations and protocols" and how pre-departure targeting and hold resolution policies and procedures will impose minimal negative impact on time-sensitive carrier operations,” the subcommittee said.
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Currently, potential participants “literally do not know ‘what they are signing up for’ when they join the automated export pilot,” the subcommittee said. It also recommended that CBP, no later than the first quarter of 2018 set up a dedicated export “technical task force” to “catalog, prioritize, and expeditiously resolve” technical issues to improve pilot progress, after CBP decentralized the pilot testing processes to ACE client representatives who are too busy with issues related to mandatory ACE implementations to resolve issues in a reasonable amount of time, according to a presentation slide.
CBP has moved past the initial phase of its export manifest pilot of proving it can receive and process information, and is moving toward the operational requirements phase of the pilot, said Jim Swanson, director of cargo security and controls and cargo and conveyance security in CBP’s Office of Field Operations, during the meeting. “We’re going to start laying that out,” he said. It will be “high-level. It will be evolving as we go. We’ll add things; we’ll remove things.”
CBP should also set the latest submission time for export ocean bills of lading -- including straight, master and house bills -- to at 24 hours before vessel loading at the port of export, to align with import manifest filing deadlines established by the EU and other destination jurisdictions, and align it with CBP’s ocean import filing deadline, the export subcommittee said. The agency should harmonize the latest possible submission time for house-level air waybills by indirect air carriers (IACs), as well as simple bills by shippers, IACs, carriers and/or agents, with Census Bureau requirements for AES air submissions, it said. The export group also recommended the latest possible submission time for master air waybills be prior to aircraft departure from the U.S.
For consolidated air shipments requiring AES filings, CBP and Census should link a U.S. Principal Party in Interest's AES filing to the export manifest filing by requiring the USPPI to provide the internal transaction number (ITN), AES downtime citation or AES post-departure citation to the IAC, the COAC export subcommittee said. CBP should also require the IAC to include the ITN or downtime/post-departure citation in its house bill filing in ACE, it said. For direct shipments requiring AES filings, the USPPI should provide the ITN, AES downtime citation or post-departure citation to the air carrier, and CBP should require that carrier to include the ITN or downtime/post-departure citation in its straight air waybill ACE filing, the subcommittee recommended.
Other COAC recommendations on exports adopted at the Nov. 14 meeting include that CBP adopt a new way to capture data denoting AES filing exemptions associated with ocean and air export shipments. The trade community has “selected” a new nomenclature of three-character codes for AES exemptions that are “more rationally derived” from corresponding paragraph citations in the Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR), the recommendations say. AES exemptions/exclusions are currently identified via FTR paragraph citations. CBP and Census should adopt the new nomenclature as soon as possible, quickly update ACE to accept the new nomenclature, and broadly notify pilot participants and the trade about the proposed programming change to accommodate the codes as well as the proposed requirement to identify exemptions using three-character codes instead of FTR paragraph citations, COAC said.
The COAC recommended that CBP and Census require for ocean export shipments exempted or excluded from AES filing requirements that the USPPI provide the correct three-character alphanumeric code in the CBP/Census exemption/exclusion code table to the carrier that issues the lowest level bill of lading, for that carrier to include the exemption code in its bill of lading filing in ACE. Another recommendation, for air export shipments exempted or excluded from AES filing requirements, says CBP and Census should require the USPPI to give the appropriate three-character alphanumeric code from the same code table to the IAC for consolidated shipments, requiring the IAC to include the AES exemption/exclusion citation in its house bill filing to ACE. The same recommendation states that CBP and Census should require the USPPI, in direct shipments, to give such code to the air carrier, requiring that carrier to include the AES exemption citation in its straight air waybill filing to ACE.