CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP recently posted its updated cutover plan for the Jan. 6, 2018, deployment of statements in ACE, it said in a CSMS message. During the deployment there will be an outage period for payments and statements beginning Friday, Jan. 5, 2018, after 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and ending Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, CBP said. ACE statements will begin processing “post data conversion” on Monday, Jan. 8, 2018, with the exception of reconciliation statements, which is scheduled for deployment in February. ACE collections will not be deployed alongside statements, CBP said. “The date for the collections deployment in ACE is TBD.” Software developers have called for CBP to issue its cutover plan at least 30 days before statements go live in ACE (see 1710100068).
Regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over imports and exports published their regulatory plans for the next several months as part of the Fall 2017 Unified Agenda. As in the first regulatory agenda published by the Trump administration this spring, the fall agenda takes a deregulatory bent, although many regulations left off the prior agenda reappear in several agencies' plans. The Food and Drug Administration looks set to be particularly active, listing in its agenda new deregulatory actions as well as several new enforcement authorities.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP should remove from its regulations a limit of "one shipment per day" for imports under $800, the National Association of Manufacturers said in comments to the agency about rules considered onerous (see 1712120024). That shipment limit goes against "modern business practices where manufacturers may need to import commodities, component[s] or other goods on a 'just in time' basis," NAM said. "Manufacturers recommend that CBP eliminate the one shipment per day provision to be consistent with the" Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, which raised the dollar value of the de minimis threshold.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Dec. 4-8 in case they were missed.
CBP's deployment and full use of ACE capabilities offers the biggest chance to lessen regulation and related costs, Boeing and others said in comments to CBP. The comments came in response to a CBP solicitation for input on regulations seen as deserving elimination or changes (see 1709110004). "We believe that moving to a fully paperless environment and ensuring maximum utilization of the ACE Portal will be the one achievement that will have the most significant positive effect on streamlining and reducing regulations, and for that reason it should be the priority focus of a regulatory review," Boeing said.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently “grappling” with whether the trade community is ready for new ACE filing requirements for high-risk seafood under its Seafood Import Monitoring Program, said Dale Jones, an NMFS fishery program specialist, at CBP’s East Coast Trade Symposium on Dec. 6. The December 2016 final rule will still go into effect on Jan. 1, but NMFS does not want to hold up trade, so there may be some way the agency can “work diligently” with affected importers to help them through the transition, he said. “We might hit some turbulence.” The new data requirements will initially apply to imports of Atlantic cod, Pacific cod, blue crab, red king crab, dolphinfish (mahi mahi), grouper, red snapper, sea cucumber, sharks, swordfish, and albacore, bigeye, bluefin, skipjack and yellowfin tuna, with requirements also eventually planned for shrimp and abalone. The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America recently called on NMFS to adopt a “soft compliance” policy, citing readiness concerns (see 1712040022).