Mexico's Diario Oficial of March 20 lists notices from the Secretary of the Economy and Secretary of Finance as follows:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission should hold a dialogue with the trade community before it finalizes new entry documentation requirements, said a group of trade associations a letter to the commission dated March 14. CPSC proposed in May 2013 to require product safety compliance certificates to be filed with CBP at time of entry (see 13051018). That is a “significant change to current supply chain operations and will have a major adverse impact on businesses’ operations,” said the letter. The changes merit that CPSC hold a public form “as soon as possible,” said the trade groups. “It is important for the CPSC to fully understand how the current entry process works and how this change would not only impact the industry, but Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the CPSC as well,” it said.
Mexico's Diario Oficial of March 17 lists notices from the Secretary of the Economy and Secretary of Finance as follows:
NTIA’s plan to transfer Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) functions to the global multistakeholder community (WID March 17 p1) brought cheers from Europe Monday. The move “is the responsible and right thing to do,” said EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes on her blog (bit.ly/1g2wrrC). The “interesting” timing of the announcement may mean the April 23-24 NetMundial Internet governance meeting in São Paolo, Brazil, will be more about finding a common approach than worrying about the U.S.’s “special relationship” with domain name system (DNS) functions after Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA spying, said Michele Neylon, CEO of Irish registrar Blacknight Solutions, in an interview. European telecom network operators and the computer and communications industry applauded the move. (See separate report in this issue.)
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Brokers will continue to be an integral part of the trade process even as the role of the CEEs increases, said Leon Hayward, director of the pharmaceuticals CEE, while speaking on a panel at the CBP Trade Symposium March 7. The companies that are involved in developing the CEEs have told Hayward “no matter how much this kind of stuff changes, we’re still going to use our brokers to file our entries” because “we don’t want to do that ourselves,” he said. That's been true at Nike, which is participating in a CEE, said Matt Varner, the company's director of trade operations. There is still a constant line of communication between Nike and its brokers , he said.
Importers and customs brokers facing the growing problem of counterfeiting should prioritize open lines of communication with CBP, said industry and government officials at the CBP Trade Symposium on March 7. Giving information to CBP about products and the problems a company is having allows the agency to know what to look for at the ports. And brokers can help in that process by facilitating that communication with the ports and taking advantage of their knowledge of their clients’ imports, said an industry official. The Centers of Excellence and Expertise will facilitate communication between importers and CBP and are hoped to improve intellectual property rights enforcement, they said.
CBP will face a number of new logistical challenges as it works to transition three Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEEs) to handle several entry processes for entire industries, said industry and agency officials that spoke at the 2014 Trade Symposium. The first three CEEs to make the shift -- those handling electronics, petroleum and pharmaceutical industries (see 14030613) -- will be tasked with processing the entries of tens of thousands of companies when they previously handled under a hundred, said CBP officials during a panel on the CEEs.
CBP is extending the comment period to April 10 for an existing information collections related to customs brokers. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours.
CBP said the following customs broker licenses have been reinstated and are currently active: