Concerns recently raised by the trade community over trade facilitation could affect prospects for advancing an effort to modernize U.S. customs laws.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been working since 2019 to advance its 21st Century Customs Framework, which seeks to position the agency to better respond to an evolving global trade environment. Legislation to advance the 21CCF was introduced in November 2021 but was seen as focusing more on enforcement than trade facilitation. CBP’s Customs Commercial Operations Advisory Committee has been working closely with the agency since then to address both issues as CBP has sought to develop and refine its own package of legislative proposals.
The COAC task force leading that effort is now ending its work without endorsing CBP’s package due to what it called “the absence of meaningful trade facilitation measures.” A task force report explained that CBP supported only five of 19 trade facilitation recommendations offered by COAC.
Asserting that measures like these are “essential for the success of customs and trade modernization in the 21st century,” the task force urged the trade community to “seek opportunities to advance [them] directly with Congress.” Examples include the following.
- allowing for data transmissions from traditional and non-traditional parties as the data materializes in the supply chain
- installing guardrails on CBP’s ability to impose additional data requirements
- developing programs in which partner government agencies involved in admissibility and clearance activities provide trusted traders with specific benefits
- allowing pre-departure, pre-arrival release and/or resolution of imported goods
- creating a cargo pre-clearance process at foreign ports of departure
- providing for release of imported goods unless recalled due to imminent threat to health, safety, or security
- allowing goods shipped from U.S. foreign-trade zones to be eligible for de minimis entry
- reducing the merchandise processing fee for CTPAT validated members
- directing CBP to provide importers with information to help them better address forced labor concerns
- imposing antidumping and countervailing duties prospectively instead of retrospectively
More than a dozen major trade associations recently expressed their support for these types of measures in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees. The letter urged lawmakers to “look to [CBP’s] 21CCF proposal as a starting point while also looking to build upon CBP’s existing trade facilitation authorities and incorporate a robust trade facilitation component.” Additional recommendations made in this letter included codifying the parties granted the right to make entry as currently defined under customs regulations, establishing reasonable timelines for CBP and PGA responses to trade actions and requests, allowing a single submission of information covering all goods in an express shipment and expedited release of such shipments based on those submissions, developing an ACE 2.0 system that allows for account-based processing, and expanded sharing of enforcement-related information with parties of interest to particular transactions.
How Congress will respond to these calls for improved trade facilitation measures remains unclear. The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on customs modernization earlier this year and is reportedly planning another later this summer, possibly to consider CBP’s proposal if it is submitted by then. In the meantime, several lawmakers are working on their own legislation and are actively seeking information on how to incorporate trade facilitation provisions.
For more information on these efforts, please contact Lenny Feldman at (305) 894-1011 or via email or Nicole Bivens Collinson at (202) 730-4956 or via email.
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