The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service hopes to begin implementation of its seventh and penultimate phase of Lacey Act declaration requirements toward the end of 2023, the agency’s Erin Otto said Sept. 19, speaking at a National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference in Washington. Otto said APHIS hopes to complete phase seven implementation in the summer of 2024, at which point the agency will pivot to the final phase eight.
House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who schedules when legislation gets a vote in that chamber, said no one has brought up the Customs Business Fairness Act to him, and while he is aware it was part of a 2021 COVID-19 relief package, he hasn't heard anything about it lately.
CBP’s final rule creating a continuing education requirement for customs brokers is in the “stretch run,” with the regulations written and in the initial stages of review with CBP’s Office of Trade, said John Leonard, deputy assistant commissioner-trade at CBP, in remarks Sept. 19. The final rule only has to be signed by the secretary of homeland security, which will make for a quicker process than for CBP rules that also have to be signed by the treasury secretary, said Leonard, speaking at a National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference.
The Part 111 broker regulations in the works for five years are about to be released (see 2209140051) and National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America Customs Committee Chair Mary Jo Muoio that said there are aspects of the rules that the group welcomes, and others that it dreads.
After 20 years of pushing, customs brokers got a carve-out to bankruptcy law so that the money importers give them to send to CBP to pay tariffs are not subject to clawback after a bankruptcy filing. The clawback provisions are there so that company insiders or other parties don't get favorable payments just before a filing. But that carve-out expired at the end of last year, and now brokers are trying to get it back. National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America members are making the Customs Business Fairness Act their No. 1 ask during lobbying on the Hill on Sept. 19.
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CBP hopes that its 19 CFR 111 customs broker modernization final rule will go for publication "at any moment," and it will hold "multiple webinars" on the new regulations, which are set to eliminate district permits, to provide details on the rule as it is published, CBP Deputy Commissioner Troy Miller said at the Sept. 14 meeting of the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee.
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated Sept. 5 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
Customs brokers don't need to receive duties directly from an importer and can receive funds from a middleman, CBP said in a ruling issued Aug. 25 and released by the agency Sept. 6 (HQ H318461). The decision followed a request from World Customs Brokerage (WCB) for a binding ruling regarding broker relations with unlicensed persons. Both WCB and freight forwarder World Courier, Inc. (WCI) are subsidiaries of AmerisourceBergen Corporation, and WCI often forwards imports to WCB for customs brokerage services and bills and receives payment through WCI.
CBP posted several documents ahead of the Sept. 14 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting: