U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently announced that updates will be made to the CAMIR and ANSI X12 sea and rail interface guidelines that will set the stage for announcing an enforcement date to require residue (such as chemicals or other bulk goods) imported in containers considered to be instruments of international traffic (IIT) to be manifested, classified, and entered. CBP has delayed setting an enforcement date for this requirement since May 2011 pending the ability for Section 321 entries to be electronically filed in the rail mode.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a December 9, 2011 press release on the ACE Simplified Entry test and the nine brokers selected to participate, along with some of the brokers' clients that were selected too. An associated fact sheet dated August 2011 (here) is provided as a link, along with a July 2011 trade outreach seminar on SE (here) is available.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message providing a projected timeline for decommissioning the Automated Manifest System (AMS) for rail and sea manifests and transitioning to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). CBP anticipates that the Federal Register Notice naming ACE as the only CBP-approved electronic data interchange (EDI) for the transmission of rail and sea manifests will be published by the end of the first quarter of calendar year 2012 and that rail and sea manifest capabilities for the AMS in the Automated Commercial System (ACS) will be decommissioned within six months of that publication date.

In December 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection updated its eight Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on voided Importer ID input Records (CBP Form 5106), making one substantive change. In the third FAQ, CBP clarifies that acceptable proof of an Employee Identification Number (EIN) includes a preprinted document that is received from the IRS.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has updated its ACE ABI Customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements (CATAIR) for the Chapter on Cargo Release (Certified from an ACE Entry Summary) in order to correct the description of a data element in the H2-output record. ACE ABI 2011 Change Record, including the December 2, 2011 change, available here. Home page for ACE ABI CATAIR available here. CSMS #11-000306 notice of posted correction available here.

At the December 7, 2011 COAC meeting, CBP officials provided an update on the status of the planned test of Automated Commercial Environment Simplified Entry (SE) in the air environment. Officials stated that CBP’s target date for the first SE filing is late January 2012. CBP also plans to test SE in the ocean and rail environments after M1 is deployed and hopes to soon include additional complexities (PGA entries, etc.) in the test.

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

Trade Support Network (TSN) Committee members are expected to meet on December 7, 2011 to discuss a number of Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) topics, including ongoing issues with Post Summary Correction (PSC), such as its functionality in the ACE Portal, the visibility of data elements for original entry summary filers, and the possibility of using the PSC framework to transition ACS drawback to ACE.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that rail carriers will soon be sending rail manifests into the ACE M1 production environment. This requires that all brokers or self-filing importers participating in Rail Line Release create Entry Banks in ACE. The ACE Entry Bank numbers must be unique and cannot overlap with the ACS Entry Bank numbers. CBP warns that anyone currently receiving releases using Rail Line Release must create their ACE Entry Banks using the ACE Secure Data Portal as soon as possible. Refer to the User Guide in CSMS #11-000208 dated 09/02/11 for more information, or reach out to your Port Entry Bank contact.(CSMS #11-000302, dated 12/05/11)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing a December 4, 2011 free webinar for rail and sea carriers titled: Navigating ACE for Rail and Sea Carriers: How to Get the Most Out of Your Portal Account. The webinar will provide a walk-through of the available capabilities on each portal tab including in-bond authorization, ocean conveyances, assigning access privileges, references and tips and tricks on effectively managing the account. Attendees will be able to follow along in their own account should they choose to do so. The time of the webinar is 1:00 -2:30 p.m. Eastern time. See notice for details of registration. (CSMS #11-000301, dated 12/05/11)