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

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the following ACE User Guides:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the presentations used at the September 22-23, 2011 Trade Support Network meeting. The postings include presentations given by CBP, APHIS, FDA, FSIS, USCG and the TSN Trade Leadership Council (TLC). The 11 presentations are available here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a press release on the October 4, 2011 COAC meeting held in El Paso, Texas. CBP Deputy Commissioner David V. Aguilar opened the meeting and co-chaired it with Tim Skud, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Treasury.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the August 2011 TSN Monthly Committee Report which summarizes the Trade Support Network activities of its ten committees regarding the export manifest, broker management, the official notice of liquidation, drawback in ACE, etc.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials and COAC members discussed their plans to explore and develop ideas on strengthening antidumping and countervailing enforcement by addressing issues such as bonding and transshipment at the October 4, 2011 COAC meeting in El Paso, TX. CBP and COAC also discussed Intellectual Property Rights enforcement, including the subcommittee's exploration of the viability of a C-TPAT-like program for IPR and the use of authentication “keys” to protect IPR throughout the supply chain.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has re-posted the following links on ACE e-Manifest: Ocean and Rail (M1), which was deployed on August 27, 2011: (1) Information Notice (here); (2) Web-Based Training (here); (3) In-Bond Authorization (here); and (4) Creating and Maintaining Entry Banks (here).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials recently stated that the agency is "on track" to fully deploy e-Manifest: Ocean and Rail (M1) at the end of January 2012. The agency has done a lot of testing and is ahead of schedule internally to meet this deadline. In addition, a group of three carriers is waiting for the go-ahead to send manifests in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), which can be set up in a three-week time frame.

The International Trade Data System has issued a draft report for trade comment by November 15, 2011, on the results of three pilot studies conducted to validate the business case for using e-commerce data, such as global product numbers/codes and electronic product catalogs, to improve product visibility at international borders. The report shows that the three product sets on which the pilots focused - toys, cut flowers, and meat and poultry¹ -- all benefited from the use of such data and could save importers millions of dollars. The report also states that a new ACE PGA Message Set will be implemented in 2012 to pass e-commerce data to participating government agencies (PGAs).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials and COAC members discussed COAC's recommendations and CBP's next steps for the agency's Role of the Broker Project at the COAC meeting that was held on October 4 in El Paso, Texas. CBP also discussed its proposals for Simplified Entry, Summary and Financial Processing, including its plans for a Simplified Entry pilot before the end of 2011.