CBP should update its regulations on prior disclosures to clarify the requirements and benefits of prior disclosures of forced labor violations, the Commercial Customs Operation Advisory Committee said in recommendations adopted at the April 15 COAC meeting. Regulations on forced labor should also be amended, and guidance documents issued, to clarify what should be included in a forced labor allegation, as well as how CBP should inquire about potential violations and how importers should respond, the COAC said.
CBP won't be delaying dates around implementation of the updated Minimum Security Criteria for the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, but it will allow for more discretion in the validations, said Thomas Overacker, CBP executive director, Cargo and Conveyance Security. Overacker addressed concerns about the requirements during the April 15 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting.
As this year’s deadline for applications for the Voluntary Qualified importer Program approaches, formal interest in the Food and Drug Administration’s trusted trader scheme for food importers is nearly non-existent, despite high hopes from the agency when it was announced several years ago. Unclear benefits, a high cost of participation and a multitude of barriers to entry are among several issues keeping importers away, experts on importing food say.
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet April 15, remotely, beginning at 1 p.m., CBP said in a notice. Comments are due in writing by April 14.
CBP’s cargo operations remain mostly unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, CBP said on a call held March 13, according to an emailed update from the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America. There are no additional screening requirements for cargo because medical professionals have advised that COVID-19 is transmitted by people not cargo, CBP said on the call, according to the American Association of Exporters and Importers. “If CBP receives different guidance, they will relay that information immediately,” CBP said, as relayed by the NCBFAA.
CBP is in the very early stages of considering whether to expand the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program to foreign-trade zones, said Lydia Jackson, FTZ program manager in the CBP Office of Cargo and Conveyance Security. She spoke Feb. 11 during the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones legislative summit. The question has been approached before by CBP, and the agency previously found the problem to be that the FTZ importer is “not always the same entity, etc., etc.,” she said.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP recently uploaded the final versions of new Minimum Security Criteria for the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, which includes some additional criteria since the previous version was posted in May, the agency said in a notice. The main change between the versions “is the addition of two new criteria that apply to all entities: the first one is that members must have a code of conduct in place (ID Number 11.5), and the second is that members must initiate their own internal investigation of a security breach as soon as they are aware of the incident (ID Number 7.37),” CBP said.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 2-6 in case they were missed.
Recently proposed additional Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism Minimum Security Criteria for ocean carriers beyond the previously planned changes for 2020 are raising some concern, said Michael Young, vice president of Business Process and System at shipping company OOCL, during the Dec. 4 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting. Young, who is on the COAC, said during the meeting that there were seven minimum security criteria recently added for ocean carriers. CBP “did propose additional MSC in light of the recent smuggling issues that happened” as a way “to address the situation that occurred in those high-profile cases,” Young said in an email after the meeting. He declined to go into specifics because the proposal is still under discussion.