NEW ORLEANS -- The Bureau of Industry and Security is working with CBP to try to speed up reviews of exports that may be subject to the October China chip controls (see 2210070049), said Teresa Telesco, a BIS official. Telesco, speaking April 25 during the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America’s annual conference, urged freight forwarders and other parties handling exports to take steps to make sure their semiconductor-related shipments aren’t being delayed, including by having technical information “on hand” to show CBP agents.
NEW ORLEANS -- Charge complaints before the Federal Maritime Commission are increasingly trending toward significant settlements or awards, industry officials said, urging shippers to file complaints if they believe they’re facing unfair carrier practices. Carriers are choosing to settle rather than draw the FMC’s attention, they said, especially for complaints involving demurrage or detention fees.
NEW ORLEANS -- The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is preparing to ask Congress to allow the Federal Maritime Commission to exercise jurisdiction over certain rail storage fees. NCBFAA is drafting a letter to Reps. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Dusty Johnson, R-S.D. -- the two House authors of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act -- that could ask the lawmakers to require the FMC to more forcefully regulate rail-assessed demurrage fees charged on ocean containers traveling inland.
NEW ORLEANS -- The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is in the process of making a change to the NCBFAA Terms and Conditions to include a provision “that has indemnification and hold harmless” for customs brokers reporting importer client wrongdoing to CBP, as required by recent changes to the Part 111 customs broker regulations, Lenny Feldman of Sandler Travis said during the group's annual conference April 26.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld CBP's decision not to grant credit to customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae of Elkhorn, Nebraska, for two questions on the April 2018 exam. Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Todd Hughes granted Chae credit for one of three questions he challenged, but that was insufficient to bring him up to the 75% threshold needed to pass the test.
NEW ORLEANS -- CBP will run a second tabletop exercise for cybersecurity focused on carriers, Trade Modernization Branch Chief Kyle Griffin announced April 24 at the annual National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference. CBP held a similar tabletop exercise in February, which led to new guidance to help customs brokers plan for cybersecurity incidents (see 2304100051). The new tabletop exercise will focus on carriers and will incorporate some of what CBP learned from the previous exercise on brokers, Griffin said. He didn't provide a timetable for the second exercise but said they help CBP better understand its gaps in helping to prevent cyberattacks.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld CBP's decision not to grant credit to customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae of Elkhorn, Nebraska, for two questions on the April 2018 exam. Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Todd Hughes granted Chae credit for one of three questions he challenged, but that was insufficient to bring him up to the 75% threshold needed to pass the test.
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NEW ORLEANS -- Submitting prior disclosures to CBP has recently been more “fraught,” and customs brokers need to consider all available options before advising their clients to move forward with the process, Heather Litman, a customs lawyer with Grunfeld Desiderio, said at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference April 25.
NEW ORLEANS -- The Agricultural Marketing Service plans to deploy new filing capabilities for organic inputs in the ACE certification environment for testing in May, with deployment to the ACE real time production environment to follow in June, Stacy Swartwood, who runs the agency’s Organic Integrity Database, said during a panel discussion April 24.