Former CBP Officials Skeptical of Project 2025 Goal to Move Trade Office Under Field Operations

But three former CBP officials told International Trade Today that following through with that recommendation to merge the trade-facing offices could potentially put trade on the back burner since OFO, which is considerably larger in staffing and resources, would be compelled to focus on border security and enforcement to the detriment of trade.

“The idea that you can just lift and move an organization that has a bit of a different mission set and a different sort of culture and environment is just asking for trouble. I actually don’t think it would increase efficiencies. I think we would have a lot of conflict between competing mission sets,” one former CBP official said.

“There’s pluses and minuses. The mission would be, in my opinion, diluted a little bit, just because Field Operations is so big and they have such a broad mission set,” another former CBP official said.

OFO and OT weren't always so distinct. Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Customs Service reported to the Tresaury Department. After 9/11, customs operations and border security became part of the newly formed DHS. However, some members of Congress, as well as influential importers, called for a separate office of trade within CBP because of concerns that trade was being marginalized, according to one of the former CBP officials.

In 2006, the Office of Trade was created to focus on trade policy. However, there was some tension between those doing trade policy and those involved in field operations, according to one of the CBP officials. OFO was still reporting to field operations headquarters, but it was also being directed by the trade office. To help address this tension, there was a small trade office created within OFO that acts as a go-between for OFO and OT. That trade office within OFO has grown to handle CBP’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise. OFO also runs the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or CTPAT, program, and it coordinates on fines, penalties and forfeitures.

The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, which was signed into law in February 2016, sought to provide further clarity on the responsibilities of the OT and the OFO. The act also called for both OT and OFO to be headed by an executive assistant commissioner (EAC) who reports directly to the CBP commissioner by law, “so one could not be folded into the other without a change to the statute,” according to a former congressional staffer who worked on the legislation.

As a result, should President Donald Trump’s Cabinet decide to merge OT and the Office of Trade Relations with OFO, it would have to go through Congress, according to the former congressional staffer.

What would result is that OT would no longer have an EAC, while OFO would still have an EAC -- and that is why at least one of the former CBP officials thinks the focus on trade could get diminished.

“Essentially, what you’d be doing is you would be taking one of the six executive assistant commissioner slots and shoving it under another,” one former CBP official said.

“If you want trade to remain an important part of the mission at CBP, then you don’t bury it in an organization with 30,000 employees that are focused on, rightfully so, other things,” another former CBP official said.

That de-emphasis on trade could be exacerbated should the top three leadership positions within CBP be filled later this year by Border Patrol agents, who might not fully understand the trade mission or have the capability to speak to stakeholders about trade, that former CBP official said.

While Project 2025 doesn’t mention the creation of an External Revenue Service, which, as President Donald Trump tweeted, would collect monies from tariffs, duties and all revenue coming from foreign sources (see 2501140064), placing OT under OFO could pave the way toward this possibility, the former CBP officials said.

“I think it’s dangerous ... to create a separate agency that might sit under a whole different department, like Commerce or something, and be separated from CBP or ‘Customs.’ To me, I don't think that sounds good for getting the mission done correctly,” one former official said.

“It seems that [the Treasury Department] is identified as the lead for the ERS. That seems to envision some movement of revenue policy from CBP that’s been delegated under the last administration to move back to Treasury. And if that is the case, that would conflict” with the Project 2025 chapter, another former official said. The former official was referring to actions taken under former President Joe Biden, where the Treasury Department delegated customs revenue functions to DHS (see 2412110035).

“If they are trying to raise the profile of enforcement and collection of customs duties, fines and penalties, and by setting up a new agency focused on that, the people I would think that would be part of an agency would be not only the people in the Office of Trade, but also the people in Field Operations doing trade in the Centers of Excellence and Expertise. So you’re talking about potentially removing them entirely from Customs and Border Protection, which, to be honest, depending on where you put it and depending on the resources with which you supported it, wouldn't be all bad,” another former official said.

However, it could make coordinating ERS staff with the remaining uniformed CBP officers processing cargo “much more challenging,” the former official continued.

Another uncertainty is what would happen to ACE if the ERS were created, one of the former officials said.

“Our CBP people, those non-uniformed people, operate ACE. They’re the ones that are the lifeblood of ACE. If you were to take them out, even if you put ACE underneath Commerce -- you have to have the border agency together, in my opinion, to work most efficiently,” the former official said.

Whether Project 2025’s idea has any merit was debatable among the three former officials. One former official could see some benefit from having a more efficient field structure or headquarters structure for OFO. However, the trade mission could “get watered down,” the official said.

“My ideal structure would be if there was just one group that did policy for the field in trade and [in] the traditional trade and customs cargo mission,” the former official said.

Another former official said that OFO “promote[s] consistency between ports and how operations are happening, and how penalties are being issued and mitigated and go through the administrative process and all that. I think bringing an office that is less focused on that operational perspective and more focused on what sort of infrastructure and guidance needs to be in place is actually a helpful separation of labor, if you will.” The former official described OFO as having a “law enforcement-first approach.”

A third option should be for OFO’s trade operations, such as the Centers of Excellence and Expertise, to move under OT, the third former official said.

“The Office of Trade is responsible for providing the policy, the guidance, the training, all the stuff for those people, but they don't have the day-to-day operational responsibility of [the OFO], which can be a challenging coordination dance,” the former official said.