Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, when asked about a legislative proposal that would prevent tariff payments to customs brokers from being clawed back in bankruptcy, said, “I’ve never given it any thought.” Grassley, who was speaking on a phone call with reporters May 5, didn't know that customs brokers face this problem when a client declares bankruptcy and the broker serves as a pass-through agent for tariffs. “It seems to me that in most bankruptcies the government’s first in line to recapture what the government is owed,” he said. The National Customs Brokers& Forwarders Association of America has been trying to get the proposal to be included in the next round of COVID-19 relief (see 2003200030), and International Trade Today asked Grassley whether he would support its inclusion.

The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America said that CBP told members of the trade community that very little of the personal protective equipment subject to export oversight is being slowed on its way out of the country. The CBP official said that out of 1,000 shipments, it is reviewing 100 and holding 10.

Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, Customs and Border Protection said. The March 10 ruling was disclosed by a stakeholder last week and confirmed to us by the recipient. The ruling requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site. The primary site would be in the U.S. CBP requires that for broker records stored on a server, the server must be located in the customs territory of the U.S., the agency replied. “This is where CBP has jurisdiction to issue a summons and inspect records.” There’s “no rule applicable to duplicate records,” the agency said. “It seems logical then that once the recordkeeping regulations are met, including 19 C.F.R. § 111.23(a), requiring that records be retained at any location within the customs territory of the United States, that duplicates of these records may be maintained outside the territory of the United States." Grunfeld Desiderio lawyer Alan Klestadt, who told a webinar of the ruling, said that, with a coming update to customs broker regulations, more cloud-based recordkeeping could come to be OK’d.

Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, Customs and Border Protection said. The March 10 ruling was disclosed by a stakeholder last week and confirmed to us by the recipient. The ruling requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site. The primary site would be in the U.S. CBP requires that for broker records stored on a server, the server must be located in the customs territory of the U.S., the agency replied. “This is where CBP has jurisdiction to issue a summons and inspect records.” There’s “no rule applicable to duplicate records,” the agency said. “It seems logical then that once the recordkeeping regulations are met, including 19 C.F.R. § 111.23(a), requiring that records be retained at any location within the customs territory of the United States, that duplicates of these records may be maintained outside the territory of the United States." Grunfeld Desiderio lawyer Alan Klestadt, who told a webinar of the ruling, said that, with a coming update to customs broker regulations, more cloud-based recordkeeping could come to be OK’d.

Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, Customs and Border Protection said. The March 10 ruling was disclosed by a stakeholder last week and confirmed to us by the recipient. The ruling requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site. The primary site would be in the U.S. CBP requires that for broker records stored on a server, the server must be located in the customs territory of the U.S., the agency replied. “This is where CBP has jurisdiction to issue a summons and inspect records.” There’s “no rule applicable to duplicate records,” the agency said. “It seems logical then that once the recordkeeping regulations are met, including 19 C.F.R. § 111.23(a), requiring that records be retained at any location within the customs territory of the United States, that duplicates of these records may be maintained outside the territory of the United States." Grunfeld Desiderio lawyer Alan Klestadt, who told a webinar of the ruling, said that, with a coming update to customs broker regulations, more cloud-based recordkeeping could come to be OK’d.

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for April 20-24 in case they were missed.

The Commerce Department is proposing new regulations that would create an Aluminum Import Monitoring and Analysis System. Similar to the Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis System in place since 2005, the new scheme would require importers of aluminum or their customs brokers to submit information in an online portal to obtain an automatically issued license, then submit the license number with entry summary documentation. Comments are due May 29.

Janet Fields, director of risk management at John S. James Co., was elected April 18 the new National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America president, replacing Amy Magnus, who will now be chairman of the board. Fields has spent her whole career at John S. James Co., and has been a licensed customs broker since 1988.

Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, CBP said in a March 10 ruling. The ruling, which was requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global, examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site for its customs records storage.

The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America is seeing “an unprecedented connectivity with CBP” so far through the COVID-19 pandemic, said Alan Klestadt, customs counsel to the NCBFAA, during an April 21 webinar with lawyers for the association. “We're speaking with senior headquarters officials on a daily basis, multiple times a day, talking with them about developing policy, whether it is statement processing, duty deferral,” said Klestadt, a lawyer at Grunfeld Desiderio. That's particularly important when others in government “don't appreciate the granularity” of detail that customs brokers need to “effectively implement the policy decisions and the policy goals that the administration is pursuing.”