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.
The Commerce Department has the statutory authority to conduct expedited countervailing duty reviews, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held April 25. Reversing a Court of International Trade ruling concerning imports of certain softwood lumber products from Canada, Judges Timothy Dyk, Jimmie Reyna and Richard Taranto said that authority for the review process is found in the Uruguay Round Agreement Act's enactment of certain provisions that favor individual company determinations and the URAA's "grant of regulatory-implementation power to Commerce." Taranto, the opinion's author, added that logically, it is clear why an expedited process may be needed to ensure that the individualized determination preference of the statute is implemented.
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.
A request to fund at least 600 additional CBP officers and staff at the Office of Field Operations is at the heart of a letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America; 11 other national travel, cargo or ports trade groups; and a host of local and regional trade groups. The letter, sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, said wait times for both travelers and cargo at ports of entry are growing, especially as CBP officers from air, sea and northern border ports are being assigned to 60-day stints along the Southwest border to process migrants walking into the U.S. from Mexico.
CBP will on May 20 deploy automated Form 6051D detention notices in ACE, including for Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act detentions, the agency said in an April 21 CSMS message. “This enhancement will give importers the ability to view, search, and respond to CBP Form 6051D using the ACE Forms application accessible through the ACE Secure Data Portal,” CBP said.
Though only required for customs brokers that apply for a national license after CBP’s broker modernization final rule took effect this past December, CBP sees customs broker supervision plans as a “best practice for all brokers, and we would encourage all brokers to have a supervision plan in place,” said Shari McCann, director of CBP’s commercial operations, revenue and entry branch, on April 18.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.