According to officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP expects the first filing of a live Simplified Entry by pilot trade participants to occur in March 2012. Testing with the trade is now expected to begin in late January or early February 2012, due to delays caused by M1’s pushed-back deployment schedule.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a message stating that due to problems with the URL for accessing the ACE Trade Web Based Training site on cbp.gov, CBP has created a new URL that will allow the trade to access the WBT: http://nemo.cbp.gov/ace_online.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a message to ACE Portal Accounts stating that following a code change early Wednesday morning, January 18, QP in-bond shipments that were accepted in ABI failed to appear in ACE Truck carrier portal accounts and also failed to link to EDI truck manifest shipments. CBP corrected the problem at 7:29 p.m. EST and newly-filed QP shipments are available for linking to ACE Truck manifests either by ABI or in carrier portal accounts.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting comments by February 17, 2012 on a proposed Document/Payment Transmittal form for ACE entry summaries, which is part of its information collection request for CBP Form 7501. CBP had previously announced its intent to extend the expiration date of its CBP Form 7501 information collection with a change to the burden hours. CBP is now proposing to add this new Document/Payment Transmittal form and is reopening the comment period for an additional 30 days.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted presentation slides on its "Trade Transformation" initiatives for 21st century trade. Within the slides, CBP states that it seeks to improve cargo security while increasing trade competitiveness by fully aggregating risk management. According to CBP, it will accomplish this by leveraging end-to-end visibility of accounts that captures a holistic view of the global supply chain through the use of its "BEST" goals.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which began processing GSP duty refunds in early December for entries made during the period of January 1, 2011 through November 4, 2011, now states that refunds have been issued for all automatic refund requests (i.e., for entries that were filed duty-paid via ABI with the SPI "A"), except for ones that "failed" this refund process, which are being sent to the ports where entry was made to be manually processed. The target date for CBP completing the refund process for the SPI "A" failed entries is the end of February 2012.

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 has issued CSMS Message #12-000007 announcing that it has conclusively determined that recently released Microsoft Internet Explorer version 8 security patch KB2585542 is not compatible with the current ACE application, and is affecting response times in the ACE Portal. If users have recently implemented the new Microsoft patch and are experiencing slow response times, CBP recommends that they remove the patch to use their ACE Portal accounts. CBP continues to investigate this issue and will provide additional information when available.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted presentation slides on its "Trade Transformation" initiatives for 21st century trade. Within the slides, CBP states that it seeks to improve cargo security while increasing trade competitiveness by fully aggregating risk management. This will be accomplished by leveraging end-to-end visibility of accounts that captures a holistic view of the global supply chain. CBP also outlines how it will accomplish this through its BEST goals: (1) Better Targeting; (2) Expedite Trade; (4) Segment Risk; (5) and Transaction Savings and through its various trade initiatives. These initiatives include Air Cargo Advance Screening (ACAS), Importer Security Filing (ISF), Simplified Entry/summary, ACE, Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEE), and the role of the broker. CBP also maps out the supply chain for each mode of transportation and ACE.

Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for January 9-13, 2012 in case they were missed last week.