U.S. Customs and Border Protection has listed the trade benefits for participants in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) by industry segment. Specific benefits are listed for Customs brokers, importers, self-filers, sureties, carriers, trade account owners (TAOs), as well as all users with portal accounts, for (1) ACE Secure Data Portal, (2) Periodic Monthly Statement, (3) ACE Reports, (4) Entry Summary Filing, (5) Post Summary Corrections, (6) e-Manifest: Truck and (7) e-Manifest: Rail and Sea.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice stating that if Ocean Manifest Users are not yet filing their ocean manifest data via ACE e-Manifest: Rail and Sea, nor testing to become certified, it's now time to take action.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that a data communications problem at the CBP Data Center is currently affecting some trade partners (ABI and EDI data for all FAST truck manifests and other ACE truck manifests). CBP will provide an update as additional information becomes available. (CSMS #12-000097, dated 03/20/12)

Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for March 12 - March 16, 2012 in case they were missed last week.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its ranking of priority ACE projects, including those that are in the works and planned. According to CBP, the development of DIS, PGA Message Set, PGA Interoperability, and some Export work is fully funded and Cargo Release/Simplified Entry is partially funded. After that, unless future funding is available for the continuous development of new capacities, ACE development work will cease.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the following releases on commercial trade and related issues:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the materials from its March 6-8, 2012 Trade Software Developer Technical Seminar at the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) meeting. During the seminar, CBP officials discussed programming changes for existing and new functionality scheduled to be delivered as part of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Access all of the seminar materials here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing that in approximately 6 months certain ABI applications will be transitioned to ACE as part of the ACE M1 Ocean and Rail Deployment. When this transition takes place, filers will no longer be able to transmit or receive data for the following ABI capabilities using ACS: (1) In-Bond transactions for ocean, rail, and truck using ABI Application Identifiers QP/WP, (2) Status Notifications using ABI Application Identifier NS, and (3) Broker Download information using ABI Application Identifier BD.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced the issuance of Harmonized System Update 2013 on changes to the 2012 Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS). This update was created on March 15, 2012 and contains 11,6214 Automated Broker Interface (ABI) records and 23,379 harmonized tariff records.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an interim rule, effective March 15, 2012, that amends CBP regulations to implement the customs-related provisions of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KFTA). Comments must be received by May 18, 2012.