A Commerce Department advisory committee is considering proposing recommendations to “overhaul” the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or CTPAT, program. Norm Schenk, chair of the Trade and Regulatory Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness, said the subcommittee will discuss reforming the program but hasn’t yet taken any formal actions. “Certainly after 9/11 there were a lot of positive things that went in through CTPAT, but quite frankly, it's kind of outlived its usefulness, and there's not a lot of companies that are joining or using it,” Schenk, president of NT Schenk & Associates, said during a June 24 ACSCC meeting. He said the subcommittee will potentially make recommendations to “connect the dots and provide a more comprehensive program that would help CBP and the PGAs achieve their goal.”
Former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, testifying at a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, said that in order to implement more withhold release orders, the Department of Homeland Security needs more resources to do investigations in the foreign countries where forced labor is alleged.
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The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet remotely June 23, CBP said in a notice. Comments are due in writing by June 22.
Members of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program would like to see better communication and a continued reliance on virtual visits, the University of Houston Borders, Trade and Immigration Institute found in a recently released study. “CTPAT is already taking action to address areas of improvement found within the study such as providing increased training for [supply chain security specialists (SCSS)] and looking into a formal mechanism for collecting member feedback,” CTPAT Director-Office of Field Operations Manuel Garza said in a note to members. Garza said he plans to create an internal task force to review the findings.
CBP is now using audits in some cases to make sure e-commerce importers are compliant with the regulations, John Leonard, acting executive assistant commissioner for trade, said while speaking during a Coalition of New England Companies for Trade conference May 13. “We have begun to utilize them in the small package space, but it's baby steps,” he said. Many of the “stakeholders are not traditional importers that will have a normal set of auditable books and records that we're used to with larger entities.”
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Industry voices were united in telling the Commerce Department that its Information and Communications Technology and Services rule (see 2102190033) is so broad that it is practically unworkable and that it must narrow the scope of the rule. Many trade groups also said the rule should be put on hold until the pre-clearance or licensing process is established. In 18 comments, from trade groups, broader business groups and others, industry told the government that if there isn't either a carve-out or segmentation in how different imports are treated, compliance will be expensive, or even catastrophic, if pre-clearance reviews can't be done quickly.
CBP will take a look at how it can bring foreign-trade zones into the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, Thomas Overacker, CBP executive director-cargo and conveyance security, said April 28 during the virtual National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones spring seminar. “We've committed to explore how we can incorporate FTZs into the CTPAT program,” he said. “We've long considered the documentation and internal controls of your industry as best practices for security and supply chain integrity. It only makes sense that you receive the recognition that you deserve.”
Todd Owen, former executive assistant CBP commissioner who worked in the Office of Field Operations before retiring, said during a March 3 webinar that the trade community should expect to see a lot more traditional customs work over the next few years, such as missed descriptions, undervaluation, duty evasion and import safety. Owen, who is a senior trade adviser at Diaz Trade Law, also said during the webinar that he thinks stopping goods made with forced labor is going to continue to be a priority for the Biden administration. “I don’t see this going away,” he said.