The ongoing northern border travel ban seems to be leading to a growth in drug seizures found within cargo shipments, said Manuel Garza, Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program director in CBP's Office of Field Operations. “On a normal given year, I could probably count five seizures on the northern border with drugs,” he told the American Association of Exporters and Importers conference June 29. “This past year during COVID, we're probably up to 100, if not more than that,” he said.
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Although CBP was not able to meet its goal of adding forced labor to the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program in 2020, as it had planned (see 2007130041), the agency is trying to do so before Sept. 30 this year, according to Valarie Neuhart, CBP deputy executive director in the office of trade relations. Neuhart, who was speaking to a supply chain meeting on June 24, also said the agency will host industry days on the topic of forced labor the week of June 28 to allow people to see demonstrations of technologies that can trace products' country of origin, or can help firms trace goods through complex supply chains.
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.
CTPAT Participants Survey Shows Desire for More Communication, Continued Use of Remote Video Contact
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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