On March 16, 2011, CBP Commissioner Bersin and other CBP leaders held a series of roundtable discussions with private sector trade representatives on the topics of account management, Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), FTZs, etc.

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

Various U.S. government agencies are seeking comments on the following information collections for which they have requested or intend to request Office of Management and Budget approval or extension of approval (see notices for specific details):

CBP has posted an updated version (version 3.1) of its ACE Entry Summary Business Rules and Process Document.

Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for March 7 -- March 11, 2011 in case they were missed last week.

In its fiscal year 2010 report to Congress on the International Trade Data System¹, the ITDS Board made one export-related recommendation and discussed future plans for export functionality in ITDS.

CBP has issued a CSMS message stating that in order to amend a previously filed ABI QP In-Bond entry, two ABI transactions are required: first, deletion of the in-bond entry, then re-adding the in-bond entry with corrected data. Often these two transactions are transmitted to ABI simultaneously. While ABI accepts these transactions together, for a shipment arriving to the U.S. by truck (MOT = 30) this sometimes results in synchronization errors between ACS and the ACE Truck Manifest system.

At a March 9, 2011 House subcommittee hearing on U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s fiscal year 2012 budget request, members heard testimony from CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, the sole witness, who discussed CBP’s budget request, testing alternatives to 100% scanning of maritime cargo, ACE investments, partnering with Mexico on outbound enforcement, etc.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General has issued a report determining that due to planning and funding issues, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not properly implemented the System Availability project that was initiated to reduce the risk of network outages at field sites that have high volumes of cargo and passenger traffic.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting comments by May 6, 2011, on a proposed new information collection, the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Trade Survey, that it will be submitting to the Office of Management and Budget for approval.