Commissioner Joseph Mohorovic vowed to find funding for the product safety component of the Trusted Trader program, at a Dec. 3 hearing on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s fiscal year 2015 operating plan. The current draft of the operating plan (here) allocates no money for development the program, despite the need for further incentives to remedy a lack of participation from industry, according to agency officials. The commission is scheduled to vote on whether to adopt the plan on Dec. 12.
The U.S. and Singapore intend to increase cooperation on customs issues though two newly signed agreements, said CBP in a Dec. 1 press release (here). CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske signed a Mutual Recognition Arrangement with Singapore, allowing CBP to consider involvement in Singapore's Customs' Secure Trade Partnership as similar to participating in the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program. Kerlikowske also signed a U.S.-Singapore Customs Mutual Assistance Recognition Arrangement (CMAA), said CBP. The Singapore CMAA, one of 72 CBP has with various countries, provides "legal framework for the exchange of information and evidence to assist countries in the enforcement of Customs laws, including duty evasion, trafficking, proliferation, money laundering, and terrorism-related activities," said CBP.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Nov. 17-21 in case they were missed.
CBP's Port of Seattle office provided additional guidance for industry on how to deal with port disruptions related to labor contract disputes on the West Coast. The Nov. 19 trade information notice largely reflects the updates from a July CSMS message (here). CBP updated a June 24 guidance (see 14062423) to include more details on how to handle shipments of FDA-regulated products. It also gives information for customs brokers whose shipments have been diverted to another district where the broker is unpermitted, updates procedures for cargo diverted to another West Coast port, and says part of CBP’s plan is to “provide front-of-the-line benefits and priority processing to partners in the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program.”
CBP posted a user manual for the coming Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism Portal 2.0 (here). CBP plans to launch the first phase of Portal 2.0 on Dec. 8 (see 1411170024). The first phase will include a new interface for the portal, it said. "A main tenet of Portal 2.0 is to facilitate more effective account management through combining multiple Trade Accounts into a single Trade Organization," said CBP in the manual. As part of the second phase, "it will also be possible to merge multiple C-TPAT accounts into a single Security Model, if accounts are managed under the same trade account and follow the same security policies and procedures."
The first phase of the new Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism portal, called Portal 2.0, will launch on Dec. 8, the agency told C-TPAT members, according to customs consulting company Trade Innovations (here). Portal 2.0 is different enough from the previous version that it may require some training, said CBP. The portal will also require new passwords, though no other data is at risk, the agency said. CBP has said it plans to begin the new C-TPAT Exporter Entity after the first phase of Portal 2.0 is completed, though specific timing remains unclear (see 1411060012).
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Nov. 3-7 in case they were missed.
The eventual addition of other government agency (OGAs) data within the Importer Security Filing program is a realistic possibility, but much would be required before that happens, said Rich DiNucci, acting assistant commissioner for the CBP Office of Field Operations. DiNucci, who spoke Nov. 6 at a Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) event, said while OGA involvement seems to be the direction the program is headed, there's still some big impediments in the way. DiNucci said he expects the government to someday look at how "you combine these data sets so you can use them cross-agency," but that's "going to be a long, long discussion."
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The timeframe for a Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) component for exporters remains in flux as problems with hardware forced the delay of a C-TPAT portal update, said George Rudy, CBP supervisor of C-TPAT Evaluations and Assessments. Rudy spoke Nov. 6 at the Northeast Cargo Symposium, a Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) event (here). He discussed a number of efforts to improve the program, including newly added benefits and work to reach a mutual recognition arrangement with China.
CBP and Mexico's Tax Administration Service signed a mutual recognition arrangement (MRA) on Oct. 17, said CBP in a press release. The MRA allows the two countries' customs agencies to consider an importer's participation within either trusted trader program -- Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism in the U.S. and New Certified Companies Scheme in Mexico. “This is a significant milestone for both the United States and Mexico and the facilitation of secure trade between the two countries,” said Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske. CBP previously said it planned to reach an MRA with Mexico by the end of the year (see 14061619). "The goal of the mutual recognition arrangement is to link the two industry partnership programs, so that together they create a unified and sustainable security posture that can assist in securing and facilitating global cargo trade," said the agency.