CBP plans to start moving officers from the Northern Border and seaports to help deal with the influx of migrants at the Southern Border, the agency said during an April 11 call. "The current plans call for pulling agents from airports starting April 14 as replacements for officers concluding their 30-day shifts," according to a National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America description of remarks by CBP officials. "On April 28, the agency intends to pull replacements from the Northern Border, as well. If a third wave of replacements is needed in May, the agency will tap ocean ports for officers to fill in for the 545 officers on duty. Assuming the manpower needs remain constant, the plan calls for pulling 245 officers from the Southern Border and 300 officers from other locations," the NCBFAA said.
President Donald Trump denied he said Mexico has a year to improve drug interdiction (see 1904040030), but, for the second day in a row, he suggested Mexico is improving its control of migration, so he won't need to close the border soon. "I don't think we'll ever have to close the border because the penalty of tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Mexico at 25 percent will be massive," Trump told White House reporters a few hours after he made the one-year remark, on April 4.
The regulatory and legal aspects of CBP's blockchain efforts will likely "ramp up" if the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee recommends moving forward based on the results of the proof of concept testing, said Vincent Annunziato, director of CBP’s Business Transformation and Innovation Division (BTID). At that point, the Office of Regulations and Rulings would have to get involved by reviewing requirements that weren't necessary during the test, which simulated the NAFTA and CAFTA certificates of origin process, he said during a recent interview.
CBP is seeking comments by May 20 on an existing information collection for applications for Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and the Trusted Trader Program, it said in a notice. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection by 60 days with no change to the information collected or to the estimated burden hours associated with the collection.
CBP plans to mostly pursue Importer Security Filing-5 requirements noncompliance through liquidated damage claims, said Craig Clark, CBP's director of the Border Security and Trade Compliance Division, during a March 15 webinar. Clark said this differs from the agency's enforcement approach for ISF-10. "The common sense approach with ISF-5 is kind of the flip side of the common sense approach with ISF-10," he said. During the webinar, Clark, along with Sandra Langford-Coty, director of operational development at A.N.Deringer, and Lisa Gelsomino, CEO of Avalon Risk Management, explored multiple scenarios and what would be required from an ISF perspective.
Elizabeth Schmelzinger, who oversaw the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism programs at CBP’s Office of Field Operations, has retired, a CBP spokesman said. The agenda for the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting on Feb. 27 lists Manny Garza as "Director, Office of Field Operations, CTPAT."
The Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) for CBP will next meet Feb. 27 in Washington, D.C., CBP said in a notice.
CBP won’t go forward with its planned deployment of new Form 5106 until at least March 16, an agency official said on a call with members of the trade community. The agency has not yet set a date for the release, and may push the transition back even further depending on the level of readiness, he said on the Feb. 7 call. Testing is ongoing on the new Form 5106 in CBP’s ACE Certification environment, after deployment of the latest version of the importer ID form was delayed partly due to the recent partial federal government shutdown (see 1901170046).
The United Automobile Workers union would like to see vehicles left out of trade negotiations entirely when Japan and the U.S. sit down to craft a free-trade deal. Josh Nassar, UAW legislative director, told the International Trade Commission that Japan has no tariffs on imported cars, yet its imports are just 7 percent of sales. From all countries, Japan imported 11.1 billion in vehicles in 2017, according to World's Top Exports. In 2017, the Commerce Department said the U.S. imported $51 billion in Japanese-built vehicles. The ITC also heard from the milk lobby, the American Chemistry Council and the American Apparel and Footwear Association during its hearing Dec. 6.
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Nov. 26-30 in case they were missed.