U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a correction, effective August 24, 2011, of its final rule on the discontinuation of electronic courtesy notices of liquidation to importers of record whose entry summaries are filed in the Automated Broker Interface. In the preamble of the final rule, CBP mistakenly said that Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism members may receive Import Trade Activity (ITRAC) report for free. According to CBP, Importer Self Assessment (ISA), not C-TPAT members, receive free ITRAC reports.
On August 18, 2011, a COAC1 meeting was held where CBP and COAC members discussed the two management by account pilots -- the Center for Excellence and Expertise (CEE) pilot for pharmaceuticals and the Account Executive (AE) pilot for electronics. Among other things, CBP said it plans to create 8 to 10 more CEEs to focus on additional industries, and to make AE a component of CEEs.
On August 18, 2011, CBP and other officials presented their draft proposals for modeling new simplified entry, summary, and financial processes for imports at a COAC1 meeting, achieving their first project milestone on time. Finalized models are due by September 16, with a final report and proposal slated for delivery on September 30.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated on August 19, 2011 that it was set to deploy new code for capabilities related to rail and sea manifest (M1) on August 20, 2011, and that there would also be code for new ACE Portal capabilities that would be available to the trade in a phased approach. However, CBP issued a new message on August 21 stating that due to an unanticipated technical difficulty, deployment would be delayed one week. CBP also stated that a CSMS message would be issued with the new deployment date as soon as the schedule is confirmed.
On August 18, 2011, a COAC1 meeting was held in Long Beach, CA where CBP and COAC members discussed plans to develop recommendations for broker reform by October, roll out full-blown Centers for Excellence and Expertise in October, pilot simplified entry and financial process in October, expand the air cargo advance screening pilot to additional types of carriers and countries, and add export processing to the Automated Commercial Environment.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.
On August 16, 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted an update on the status of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). CBP outlines and provides certain statistics on deployed ACE capabilities, such as ACE Secure Data Portal, Periodic Monthly Statement (PMS), Participating Government Agency access to ACE, electronic filing of e-Manifest: Truck, entry summaries, and Importer Security Filing (ISF).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that it is hosting a series of free webinars to provide more timely and up-to-date information to the international trade community on CBP trade policy. The next upcoming trade outreach webinar will be held on September 1, 2011 and will focus on ACE Post Summary Corrections.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a final rule to discontinue mailing paper courtesy notices of liquidation for entry summaries that are filed in the Automated Broker Interface (ABI), effective on approximately September 30, 2011. Importers of record whose entry summaries are not filed through ABI will continue to receive paper courtesy notices of liquidation on CBP Form 4333-A.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has made available for immediate use new CBP Forms 301 (Customs Bond) and 301A (Addendum for additional co-principals) for continuous and single transaction bonds. The CBP Form 301 has been revised to list additional activity codes, including one for the Importer Security Filing, and to better harmonize the form with current and future automation requirements.