ARLINGTON, Va. -- CBP plans to reach out to importers and customs brokers over the next year to resolve uncertainty in the trade community over a recent uptick in import bans on goods produced by forced labor, Brenda Smith, CBP executive assistant commissioner for trade, said at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. Importers of products from countries or industries that have had “risks in the past around forced labor need to understand what we’re looking for,” Smith said June 6. Over the next four to 12 months, CBP will sit down with the trade community to “understand what you need to know to make sure you are compliant with the law,” she said. After not having issued any in more than a decade, CBP has already issued several withhold release orders (see 1603310034) in the months since the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 removed an exemption from bans on goods produced by forced labor (see 1603010043).
A federal judge recently approved a Department of Homeland Security search warrant request to investigate possible wood imports that violate the Lacey Act, said a June 6 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The request involves Global Plywood and Lumber, a California company suspected of illegally importing wood from Peru. The DHS investigative arm within ICE, Homeland Security Investigation, began the investigation last year after the Peruvian Forest Service provided evidence that an illegal wood shipment was destined for the Port of Houston, the filing said.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- As the Food and Drug Administration readies for CBP’s June 15 deadline for filing of FDA entries and entry summaries in ACE, other agencies have further to go before their partner government agency (PGA) filing capabilities become available, government officials said during a panel discussion at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. Despite indications from CBP that the Environmental Protection Agency would be among the agencies scheduled for ACE filing this summer, EPA now looks like it won’t be ready until closer to the end of the year, one EPA official said. Likewise, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, though nearing the start of its e-filing pilot, may not be ready for full ACE filing until 2019 or 2020, the commission’s import director said.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Upcoming CBP regulations are needed to address several areas left unclear by major changes to drawback in recently enacted customs reauthorization legislation, a government official and industry executives said during a June 7 panel discussion at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. CBP still needs to decide how to handle changes in classification that occur between entry and the filing of the drawback claim and changes to “lesser of” limitations on drawback. The overhaul, the biggest for drawback since 1930, presents opportunities but also poses challenges for both industry and the government, and more changes are on the way as drawback is automated in ACE, they said.
ARLINGTON, Va. -- A host of potential quota issues and a lack of industry testing is causing some anxiety in the trade community over the approaching July 23 deadline for filing entries and entry summaries for most remaining entry types in ACE, said industry executives speaking June 6 at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference. Mirroring concerns recently voiced by CBP officials over the July 23 mandatory use date (see 1605260009), one software developer on the panel said she expects the “hard cutover” for quota to cause more problems than were seen during the recent March 31 and May 28 mandatory use dates.
Megan Montgomery, currently principal consultant for MWM Consultants, will be executive vice president at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America effective July 11, NCBFAA said in a news release. Montgomery also previously worked in government affairs for the American Association of Exporters and Importers.
There's a wide range of approaches among customs regimes for overseeing customs brokers around the world, said a World Customs Organization report on the subject released May 31 (here). "There are several practices in terms of regulatory/licensing requirements, roles and responsibilities, fees and charges, cooperation mechanism between Customs and brokers," the report's summary said. The report also includes some "suggested policy and organizational considerations on Customs Brokers regime and a model checklist for licensing/regulating brokers," the WCO said in a news release (here).
A recent deployment of changes to ACE filing requirements for the Food and Drug Administration on May 31 went smoothly, despite some concerns leading up to the deployment among the trade community, said customs brokers and software developers. Following the relatively uneventful passage of CBP’s May 28 deadline for certain cargo release entry types, import filers and developers on May 31 again reported only minor issues, with an outage that evening unrelated to the deployment and its timing coincidental, said FDA.
The World Customs Organization issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
In anticipation of the upcoming July 1 deadline for implementation of amendments to the Safety of the Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, the FMC should facilitate stakeholder conversations to reach agreement on matters including verified gross mass (VGM) calculation costs, VGM protocols, and international, federal or state VGM requirements, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America said in a letter to FMC (here). The letter was written in response to an agreement filed with the commission on May 18, which NCBFAA says pertains to creating a pre-load process for VGM data submissions to carriers. NCBFAA supports the agreement, saying it “appears to set a goal of alleviating at least some of the concerns associated with the unilateral imposition of the VGM guidelines by the carriers” currently happening at the Gulf and South Atlantic ports. Per the agreement, marine terminal operators, not shippers, as previously suggested, would be responsible for providing the tare weight of a container to be used in the VGM, NCBFAA said.