U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing the issuance of Harmonized System Update 1107. This update contains 28,916 Automated Broker Interface records and 4,758 harmonized tariff records.
The Government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices for Nov 29 - Dec 2, 2011 (note that some will also be given separate headlines):
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sources have informed Broker Power that the pass rate for the October 2011 customs broker license exam was 25%. There were no problem questions.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the draft agenda for its Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of Customs and Border Protection (COAC) meeting on December 7, 2011. CBP has also posted the following presentations, draft recommendations, and other documents (note that if the links below have expired, these documents are available here):
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced the completion of the Broker Self-Assessment Outreach Pilot (BSA Pilot), a voluntary partnership with the customs brokerage community, which began in July 2009. CBP has decided to end the BSA pilot without a plan to proceed with another self-assessment type model; however, CBP and NCBFAA will pursue other avenues to collaborate on trade modernization efforts.
On November 29, 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued its November 2011 ACE Trade Account Owner (TAO) Update. The TAO provides information on a number of ACE and general trade developments, including the AM-100 report for importers (which replaced the mailed courtesy notices of liquidation), Post Summary Corrections, FMCSA status messages to ACE Truck e-Manifest filers, FAST cards, and Simplified Entry.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting comments by January 24, 2012 on an existing information collection concerning Vessel Manifest Confidentiality. CBP is proposing to extend the expiration date of this information collection with an increase to its estimate of the number of total annual responses1.
NCBFAA has sent a November 2011 letter to the Federal Maritime Commission asking it to reconsider three of its approaches to regulating ocean transportation intermediaries - NVOCC Rate Arrangements, NVOCC Service Arrangements, and OTI licensing.
On November 7-8, 2011, the World Customs Organization organized a seminar on the Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) with the theme "Security of the Supply Chain and Trade Facilitation: Challenges of the RKC." At the conclusion of the seminar, participants adopted the Sao Paulo Declaration, committing them to taking measures to promote accession to the RKC.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.