Customs is using the pilots to get more information on nontraditional supply chain actors, a senior CBP official said during a conference last week.
The trade community should expect Federal Register notices for e-commerce and Type 86 entry filing pilots “in the coming months,” Customs and Border Protection Executive Director of Policy and Trade Programs John Leonard said Friday.
“These are prototypes that seek to get us more information on some of these nontraditional actors in the supply chain and to see if some of that information is beneficial to us,” Leonard said during the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI) annual conference in Washington, D.C.
Type 86 is a type of entry being developed for de minimis imports, applicable to goods for which CBP partner government agencies (PGAs) have oversight responsibilities.
Moreover, Leonard said he thinks some PGAs are “coming around” in starting to embrace a “trusted trader type of format,” adding that he’s hearing positive input from the Food and Drug Administration regarding the concept.
CBP is considering a trusted trader program for e-commerce merchants, CBP Executive Director of Cargo Conveyance and Security Thomas Overacker said.
“That’s one of the things I challenge my guys within the CTPAT [Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism] program, as part of these pilots that we’re pursuing and some of the working groups that we’ve had,” Overacker said. Regarding “new and emerging actors in the supply chain, are there other actors that we need to bring into the fold to establish some sort of level of trust? And then based on that level of trust, what can we do as far as delivering certain benefits?”
The customs regulatory framework should be modernized to apply some level of legal responsibility to entities facilitating online transactions, as the existing framework is oriented more toward e-commerce consumers, Overacker said.
He also mentioned CBP’s 21st Century Customs Framework initiative, which is the first comprehensive review of the U.S. customs legal environment since the Customs Modernization Act was passed in 1993, through which customs is working to flesh out a detailed 20- to 30-year vision for how it regulates and facilitates trade.
Overacker said he sees the 21st Century Customs Framework as a vehicle for the trade community to make known the “pain points” that they see in trade and customs processes.
“What are the challenges and problems that are being faced?” he said. “Where should we be devoting our resources to improve processes and procedures? What are things that we’re doing now that we should stop doing, and are there things that we should be doing?”
Leonard said the framework could “very likely” become a legislative package.
“We want to make sure it’s right and get … input” from industry, he said.
Focuses of the 21st century initiative include import risk assessments, cargo processing procedures, entry modernization, data sharing and revenue collection and refunds, Leonard said.
