AAEI says DHS neglects trade facilitation

AAEI says DHS neglects trade facilitation    The Department of Homeland Security should use its ongoing reorganization as an opportunity to focus more attention on trade support functions, which have taken a back seat to security concerns during the past few years, the American Association of Exporters and Importers said in a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.
   The trade association said it is concerned that Chertoff’s top-to-bottom review of departmental policies and activities does not appear to have given much thought to traditional customs revenue, data collection and compliance issues. AAEI also called for a dialogue with the trade community to review how to preserve the Treasury Department’s authority over these matters.
   “To be frank, during the transition of legacy agencies to DHS, the business community recognized that many important trade functions would be initially relegated to secondary status following the security imperatives of a post-Sept. 11 environment. We believe that the time has come to revise this approach, not with diminishment of security efforts but with an increase in the same spirit of partnership that has served the nation so well over the past decade,” AAEI said.
   Results of the department’s so-called Second Stage Review show “a conspicuous lack of available information about departmental intentions affecting trade and related functions.”
   In the 10-page letter, AAEI noted that a new arrangement between Treasury and DHS “has not effectively reversed the diminished focus upon structures designed to facilitate trade functions.”
   AAEI also expressed concern that proliferation of new cargo security requirements, especially for feeding extra commercial data to the government, would impose substantial added costs on industry without extensive consultation and coordination with the trade community. The Washington-based group actively supports many of the supply chain security programs that include a private sector role, but said “it is time to fully consider realignment of the current departmental balance between trade security and facilitation.”
   AAEI recommended that DHS emphasize existing trade facilitation efforts, work closely with the U.S. Trade Representative in negotiating the Doha round of free trade negotiations, and place “trade attaches” overseas with major trading partners.
   Streamlining bureaucratic requirements for data that make trade more inefficient could be greatly improved by getting all agencies with international regulatory authority to use the new International Trade Data System, designed to be the government’s single window for data collection, AAEI said. It urged DHS to instruct the Coast Guard to fully participate in ITDS, and to promote the use of risk-management principles to other agencies of the federal government.
   DHS could facilitate trade by defining a single set of information requirements to meet all of its security and trade requirements, so that companies would only need to report information one time for each shipment. AAEI also expressed concern that DHS may not be factoring the Automated Commercial Environment computer system into its plans to collect additional commercial data for security purposes.