Monty Tayloe

Nearly two dozen customs broker and importer associations and retail organizations banded together in recent days to press U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to support the addition of travel goods to the Generalized System of Preferences. Industry petitions for those additions were due by Oct. 16 as part of USTR’s 2015 annual review for GSP (see 1508180027).

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Oct. 5-9 in case they were missed.

The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is now considering alternative ways CBP can support the continued presence of a sufficient number of licensed brokers in customs business, with the agency so far unreceptive to the NCBFAA’s broker employment ratio proposal, said Alan Klestadt of Grunfeld Desiderio in an interview on Oct. 9. Among the options under consideration is a possible policy statement from CBP that the agency would consider the number of licensed brokers employed when making decisions on penalty mitigation, said Klestadt, who is the NCBFAA's customs counsel.

Ken Bargteil retired as vice president at Kuehne + Nagel as of Oct. 1. Bargteil, who will continue as chair of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America’s Educational Institute Subcommittee and chairman emeritus of the group’s Customs Committee, worked 42 years in the brokerage industry, 36 of which at Kuehne + Nagel.

Leaders of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees should quickly finalize a customs reauthorization bill to allow the benefits to take effect ahead of the holiday season, said a group of trade associations in a Oct. 1 letter (here). The groups, including the Express Association of America, the Business Alliance for Customs Modernization and the Chamber of Commerce, said without the trade facilitation provisions of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (TFTEA), there's a greater risk of "of a total breakdown" in shipment processing. Lawmakers should finish the bill and send it to President Barack Obama for signature by the end of October, the groups said.

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 28 - Oct. 2 in case they were missed.

Despite some recent hang-ups for CBP's plans to update regulations governing customs brokers, Troy Riley, executive director of CBP's Office of Commercial Targeting and Enforcement, is hopeful that the agency will put out an official request for comments on proposed changes by the end of 2015, he said in an Oct. 2 interview. The inclusion of a required ratio of licensed customs broker employees remains uncertain, but is unlikely to continue to hold up the proposal, said Riley. The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America previously asked CBP to add a requirement that national permit holders should employ at least one licensed customs broker for every 12 employees (see 14072222).

Reaction from Capitol Hill on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement ranged from defiant to laudatory, though most said further review is needed ahead of any conclusion. Notably, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were among the lawmakers that were quick to voice concerns with the deal. Any trade deal would need final approval from Congress before implementation and the likelihood of such approval remains an open question (see 1509160068). Industry trade associations also withheld judgment until the final text is released but were generally supportive of the deal.

The Center for Digital Democracy, National Consumer Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group filed comments Wednesday citing privacy concerns in response to the Treasury Department’s request for information on expanding access to credit through online marketplace lending. “Among the most challenging issues confronting consumers and other borrowers are new threats to their privacy and the ability to control how data are collected and used by online financial services companies,” CDD and USPIRG said in joint comments. Online lenders and financial service companies can use an array of big data-driven digital applications to “tap into the explosive growth of online, social and internal data to make better customer decisions,” they said. Given the lack of privacy protections online for American consumers, with their data freely gathered across devices by data brokers and many others, and the increasing expenditure of the financial services industry to use this information for actionable purposes, a key challenge for the Treasury Department is to propose a national consumer and small-business framework to protect privacy for online lending and related credit and lending sectors, CDD and USPIRG said. In its comments, the National Consumer Law Center expressed concern about the use of data in ways that are “potentially inconsistent with the protections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, privacy rights and fair lending laws.” NCLC said it shared the privacy concerns other groups raised about the impact targeted advertising has on Americans, especially since most don’t know their personal data is used to “shape the offers they receive and the prices they pay online,” and particularly since lead generators gather data about potential borrowers and sell it to the highest bidder. In the payday loan market, that data can sometimes include sensitive financial information such as Social Security numbers and bank account numbers, NCLC said.

The Center for Digital Democracy, National Consumer Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group filed comments Wednesday citing privacy concerns in response to the Treasury Department’s request for information on expanding access to credit through online marketplace lending. “Among the most challenging issues confronting consumers and other borrowers are new threats to their privacy and the ability to control how data are collected and used by online financial services companies,” CDD and USPIRG said in joint comments. Online lenders and financial service companies can use an array of big data-driven digital applications to “tap into the explosive growth of online, social and internal data to make better customer decisions,” they said. Given the lack of privacy protections online for American consumers, with their data freely gathered across devices by data brokers and many others, and the increasing expenditure of the financial services industry to use this information for actionable purposes, a key challenge for the Treasury Department is to propose a national consumer and small-business framework to protect privacy for online lending and related credit and lending sectors, CDD and USPIRG said. In its comments, the National Consumer Law Center expressed concern about the use of data in ways that are “potentially inconsistent with the protections of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, privacy rights and fair lending laws.” NCLC said it shared the privacy concerns other groups raised about the impact targeted advertising has on Americans, especially since most don’t know their personal data is used to “shape the offers they receive and the prices they pay online,” and particularly since lead generators gather data about potential borrowers and sell it to the highest bidder. In the payday loan market, that data can sometimes include sensitive financial information such as Social Security numbers and bank account numbers, NCLC said.