President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2017 budget proposal released Feb. 9 asks for a $24 million increase in funding for the International Trade Administration, and a$14.4 million bump for the Bureau of Industry and Security (here). The Commerce Department’s $521 million request for ITA includes $10.4 million for hiring 36 full-time employees to expand its “capacity and footprint” and place personnel in high-demand markets, as well as $2 million for 12 new full-time employees in FY 2017 to better enforce antidumping and countervailing duty laws.

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

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

Importers are seeing an increase in requests for certificates of compliance by the Consumer Product Safety Commission due to a general effort to enhance enforcement as well as recent targeted sampling on toys, said Jim Joholske, CPSC’s acting director of import surveillance, during a Feb. 9 conference call with members of the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

The Environmental Protection Agency is amending its regulations on importation and exportation of ozone-depleting substances to implement electronic filing through the International Trade Data System (ITDS), in a direct final rule (here). Effective May 9, EPA is removing the requirement that importers submit a petition along with entry documentation for certain ozone depleting substances, and is eliminating references to paper forms that CBP will no longer use as it moves to the Automated Commercial Environment. If EPA receives adverse comments by March 10, it will withdraw the direct final rule and consider the changes as a proposal (here).

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

With the Automated Commercial Environment set to operate at full operational capacity, resulting in lower expected sustainment costs for ACE, the Department of Homeland Security is requesting $83.9 million to maintain ACE next fiscal year, $29.2 million less than DHS received for the program in fiscal 2016, according to the department’s fiscal 2016 budget request released Feb. 9 (here). “In FY 2017 ACE will be operating at full operational capacity with the Automated Commercial System (ACS) being decommissioned, thereby requiring less overall sustainment costs for the program,” DHS also asked for $118.1 million to maintain its Automated Targeting System for fiscal 2017, $3.8 million more than what was given for the preceding year.

CBP will begin accepting applications on Feb. 10 from customs brokers and self-filing importers that want to participate in a pilot to test electronic filing of Toxic Substances Control Act certifications required by the Environmental Protection Agency, it said (here). Participants in the pilot, which will be in operation for all commodities at all ports, will file TSCA certifications via EPA’s partner government agency (PGA) message set in the Automated Commercial Environment, said CBP.

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Feb. 1-5 in case they were missed.

Filing electronic data for Participating Government Agencies will likely become mandatory within the Automated Commercial Environment following the completion of individual pilots, said Maria Luisa Boyce, CBP’s senior advisor for trade engagement while speaking at a National Association of Foreign Trade Zones conference on Feb. 9. The use of the term "pilot" has been the source of some confusion and a lack of participation within ACE is among issues that lead to another delay to CBP's timelines for ACE (see 1602080042). CBP also posted a new version of its ACE Entry Summary Business Process document that reflects the new timeline (here).