On February 13, 2012, the President submitted to Congress his fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. According to the Office of Management and Budget, his FY 2013 budget proposes cuts and consolidations across the Federal government and includes more than $7.5 billion in administrative savings. The following are highlights from the President's budget proposal and annex, a DHS budget document, and other agency information.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection had earlier issued a CSMS message announcing that as a result of issues identified during ACE outages on February 9, 2012, CBP needed to take the ACE system down for an emergency maintenance period of up to 2 hours starting the afternoon of February 10, 2012 at 3:00 pm EST, with expected completion by 5:00 pm EST. CBP has now issued a second CSMS message #12-000043 (here) stating that the ACE Production System is again available to ACE Portal users and EDI filers.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the following user guides on the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE):

U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that a number of problems have recently been reported involving ABI QP inbond entries for ACE Truck Manifest shipments. CBP states the most reliable method for processing ABI QP inbonds -- whether the ACE truck manifest is filed in the ACE Portal or by EDI -- is for the carrier to report the shipment as a regular (PAPS) shipment with bill of lading details (shipper, consignee, quantity, description, etc), and allow the CBP systems to attach the ABI QP inbond to the ACE Truck shipment.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a short, summarized timeline of ACE trade functionality that spans the years 2003 through 2012 and beyond.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its "Trade Transformation" document on CBP's "BEST" trade plan for 21st century trade. This document has been updated, in part, to provide a flow diagram of the Simplified Entry process in the air cargo environment which depicts filer and carrier actions and CBP's corresponding messaging from pre-departure to arrival. The updated document also provides a general overview and expected next steps for CBP's Simplified Entry initiative.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing that it will provide updates on the programming needed for existing and new ACE functionality at a Software Developer Technical Seminar that will be part of a National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) meeting to be held on March 6-8, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. CBP states that the seminar will target ocean and rail software developers and ABI participants.

During a recent trade event¹, CBP’s Acting Assistant and Deputy Commissioners discussed Acting Commissioner Aguilar's vision for the agency and the trade community in the face of current and future budget cuts. Officials state that CBP will continue to push its mission by reducing transaction costs and transforming the organization. CBP will do this by transitioning from "regulators" to "enablers" of trade. CBP will also need to harmonize its policies and regulations with its ACE efforts, address revenue-loss issues in the AD/CV collection system, and reset the penalty/mitigation process so that it is more efficient.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expected to soon publish a proposed rule that would modernize the in-bond process so that it can go from a paper-dependent entry process to an automated-paperless process, among other changes.