Manifest Confidentiality
Importers may make a request to CBP for manifest confidentiality to deny access to import manifests for the specified company using an ocean vessel to import goods. This prevents competitors from using public records requests to identify foreign suppliers. However, manifest data is also used by civil society groups to uncover instances of forced labor in supply chains and other customs violations.
Search Primer
Term list: Separate terms with spaces, not commas or semicolons.
Multi-word term: Place inside quotes to ensure an exact match (e.g. "China import").
Acronyms: Use all capital letters to ensure the search is not looking for that letter sequence instead.
Required term: If a term must be included in any resulting articles, prefix it with a plus sign (e.g., +CBP).
Excluded term: If a term should be excluded from any articles being found, prefix it with a minus sign (e.g., -ruling).
Singular form: Always use the singular form when doing multi-word terms (e.g. "russian export control" instead of "russian export controls").
Shortest word form: When you have different word forms in a quoted (multi-word) term, you want to only include the shortest version if it is the last part of the expression (e.g., "entity list" instead of "entity listing" or "entity listed").