President Barack Obama signed the omnibus spending bill for fiscal 2016, providing $829.5 million for operation and improvement of CBP automation expenses, including $151.2 million set aside for Automated Commercial Environment development on Dec. 18 (here). Overall, the bill includes $8.6 billion for CBP, and also seeks to avoid Canadian and Mexican retaliatory tariffs by repealing meat country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations recently found by the World Trade Organization to violate global trade rules (see 1512160019).

The Food and Drug Administration recently posted to its website a diagram (here) outlining which data elements are required for filing in the Automated Commercial Environment, broken down by commodity. The diagram includes data elements required for all types of goods, as well as elements required specifically for foods, drugs, devices, biologics, tobacco and animal drugs and devices.

The submission rate for cargo release continues to edge up, with some 11.6 percent of cargo release entries in the Automated Commercial Environment as of November, according to CBP's presentation that was part of an webinar hosted by Integration Point on Dec. 15 (here). CBP reported a 10.2 percent submission rate in October. The low levels of cargo release submissions is a source of some concern at CBP ahead of the ACE transition dates (see 1510190017 and 1511050059).

Congressional appropriators finished an omnibus bill for fiscal 2016 that would provide $829.5 million for operation and improvement of CBP automation expenses, including $151.2 million set aside for Automated Commercial Environment development (here). The bill requires that $53 million of the ACE funding is spent by Sept. 30, 2018. Overall, the bill includes $8.6 billion for CBP, $3.3 million of which would be drawn from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. Additionally, the bill would allocate $30 million until Sept. 30, 2017 for recruiting, training, and equipping law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents. The House is expected to vote on the legislation Dec. 18, said a House staffer.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 7 - Dec. 11 in case they were missed.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:

CBP is working on a new Form 3461 for filing “walk-up” entries and requests for release during broker or Automated Commercial Environment system outages, said the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America in an update. Current downtime procedures will continue to apply after the ACE transition, with CBP accepting either the new Form 3461 or a cover sheet that includes the same information, said the agency, according to the NCBFAA.

The Food and Drug Administration is making no changes at the present time to the data elements it requires for filing in its Automated Commercial Environment pilot, said Domenic Veneziano, director of FDA’s import division, in response to our inquiry Nov. 11. The data elements outlined in FDA’s current supplemental guide are “critical” in admissibility decisions, allowing the agency to more timely process releases, he said at a webinar hosted by Integration Point the previous day. “The only change, at this time, to the pilot is the need to complete and submission of the template,” Veneziano said, referring to FDA’s decision to end a pilot requirement that the agency prevalidate shipment data before it is filed in ACE (see 1512080075).

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s pilot to test “core” non-Lacey Act data in the Automated Commercial Environment is now live and accepting participants for filings under the agency’s Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) and Veterinary Services (VS) programs, said APHIS officials during a webinar held jointly with CBP on Dec. 9. Two other programs, Biotechnology Regulatory Services and Animal Care, are not yet ready for piloting but will be “in the future,” said Sean Blount, APHIS’ acting assistant director for Quarantine Policy, Analysis and Support.