Customs and Border Protection will launch a two-to-four-week pilot program on blockchain technology this fall related to North American Free Trade Agreement and Central America Free Trade Agreement certificate of origin processes, a CBP spokesman said. CBP needs to reach further back into the supply chain than just the exporter and can "message multiple partners via blockchain at the same time," he said. The agency and the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate will examine how much the blockchain system reduces duplicative data and whether multiple blockchain programs can communicate simultaneously. The pilot also has a goal of evaluating "the usefulness of blockchain for a law enforcement agency," the spokesman said. Advisory committee members (see 1708250025) helped to choose this pilot subject.

Liberty Global will sell its German, Hungarian, Romanian and Czech Republic operations to Vodafone for $22.7 billion, Liberty said Wednesday. It expects the deal to close in mid-2019, pending European Commission approval. Liberty said it will continue its cable ISP operations in the U.K., Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Slovakia and still have its 50 percent stake in the VodafoneZiggo joint venture in the Netherlands. Liberty said its and Vodafone's cable networks don't overlap. In a note to investors, Citi said the deal is likely to get regulatory approval, though odds are good Germany will impose some conditions.

Customs and Border Protection is considering offering trusted trader benefits to those in the e-commerce world, to improve compliance, said John Leonard, CBP executive director-trade policy and programs, on a panel last week at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference. The hope is to "incentivize all these new actors in this space to improve the platforms and marketplaces, etc., to be more compliant," he said in Rancho Mirage, California. The agency will need to act quickly on an e-commerce policy "because it's already overtaking us," said Jim Swanson, association director-cargo and conveyance security and controls.

The Trump administration's proposed 25 percent tariffs on Chinese imports over intellectual property concerns (see 1804030072) and retaliatory Chinese actions that could follow would reduce U.S. GDP by nearly $3 billion and “destroy” 134,000 American jobs, CTA and the National Retail Federation reported Tuesday. They estimate “four jobs would be lost for every job gained.”

Negotiators of the North American Free Trade Agreement should include Section 230-modeled protections for online intermediaries to encourage free speech and foster startup efforts, TechFreedom said Friday of a letter it sent with many tech groups and associations. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides liability protection for online hosts and moderators of user-generated content. “Without those protections, even the biggest tech companies would be discouraged from empowering their users to speak freely,” TechFreedom founder Berin Szoka said. “But for startups, the potential liability would be fatal.” Others signing the letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and leaders from Mexico and Canada include the Center for Democracy and Technology and Internet Association.

China, from which Intel drew more than 20 percent of its 2017 revenue, is “one of our fastest-growing segments,” and so “we're counting on our leaders and the leaders of the world to go resolve these issues,” said CEO Brian Krzanich on a Thursday earnings call of the looming threat of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and the retaliatory Chinese actions that might follow (see 1803220043). “We believe in fair trade,” said Krzanich. “We believe that countries and companies need to be able to play in markets fairly and compete, and we're counting on this getting worked out. That's very important to us.” Intel’s Mobileye autonomous-vehicle “test fleet” has begun operating in Israel and “will expand to other geographies in the coming months,” said Krzanich. The fleet “fully implements” the “responsible-sensitive safety” system that Intel introduced last year, he said. “This unique system applies a formal common-sense safety seal to the vehicle's decision-making, resulting in the optimal combination of provable safety and human-like driving style.” Intel views the “winning path” to autonomous driving as a “progression” from current advanced driver-assistance systems to full autonomy, he said. “We're seeing significant momentum in the marketplace, including a recent high-volume design win for EyeQ5,” Mobileye’s fifth-generation vision-processing SoCs, with “a European premium vehicle manufacturer,” he said.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office accepted CTA’s request for Sage Chandler, vice president-international trade, to testify at the May 15 hearing in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed 25 percent tariffs over intellectual property disputes on certain goods imported from China (see 1804050005), a CTA spokeswoman emailed us Thursday. “U.S. imports of products from China that are on the USTR proposed tariff list" include products members import, Chandler commented, posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0005.

The China Chamber of International Commerce opposes the Trump administration’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Chinese imports (see 1803230016) and wants to send delegates from Beijing to the U.S. Trade Representative’s May 15 hearing to testify to that effect, it commented, in a filing posted Wednesday in docket USTR-2018-0005. “None of the public comments submitted by interested parties has identified any Chinese laws or regulations that mandatorily requires technology transfer, or present any real and concrete case in which the Chinese government has in practice forced transfer of technologies.”

IAB Tech Lab acquired nonprofit online identity specialist DigiTrust, the lab announced Monday, with some of its executives going to the Interactive Advertising Bureau lab (see the personals section of this publication's issue). DigiTrust will “provide additional infrastructure for the [EU General Data Protection Regulation] Transparency and Consent Framework.” The framework is an effort to enable publishers, tech vendors and advertisers to meet transparency and user choice requirements under the new EU law.

About 40 percent of American and European companies don’t expect to be in compliance with the EU’s general data protection regulation when it takes effect May 25, said a survey released Friday. McDermott Will hired the Ponemon Institute to survey 1,003 individuals (582 American and 421 European) from a variety of industries: IT, IT security, compliance, legal, data protection and privacy. Fifty-two percent of companies expect to be GDPR-compliant on or before May 25, and 8 percent were unsure.