The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 19-25:
CBP’s weekend deployment of drawback, reconciliation and liquidation in ACE was “successful,” though some hurdles remain before systems are running as intended, CBP officials said on a pair of phone calls with trade stakeholders held Feb. 26. The deployment marked a “significant milestone,” being the last of the major scheduled “core” ACE deployments, said Deborah Augustin, executive director of CBP’s Trade Transformation Office. “At this time, all import manifest, cargo release, post-release and export functionality we had scheduled for delivery in 'core' ACE is now available in ACE,” she said.
Drawback filers will likely face a period of at least four to six months under interim procedures once drawback transitions to ACE over the Feb. 24 weekend, Michael Cerny of Sandler Travis said during a Feb. 23 webinar. Though CBP finished talks with the trade community nearly a year ago, proposed regulations drafted by CBP on drawback processes under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 continue to languish in the interagency review process, so filers will begin life in the new framework under a “draft guidance” issued by CBP on Feb. 9 (see 1802120020).
No new lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 12-18.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America recently called on CBP to address several holes that still remain in ACE. “While CBP has made great strides over the last few years in development of ACE, we are still in need of additional critical development to make ACE functional,” the trade group said in a white paper. An attached “Priority List” lays out the specific needs of the trade community and where CBP is in addressing them. The group raised similar issues in a Feb. 9 letter to Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner in the CBP Office of Trade, obtained by International Trade Today
CBP’s use of audits and other enforcement tools has grown increasingly coordinated and targeted in the years since passage of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, customs consultants from KPMG said during a webinar on Feb. 13. The passage of TFTEA marked the beginning of a “different era” than that launched by the Customs Modernization Act in 1993, with the pendulum “completely swung” from informed compliance to enforcement around priority trade issues identified in the new law, they said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Feb. 5-11:
CBP looks set to take a wide open approach to electronic filing of Section 321 entries, with a “range of options” that allow filers to “do whatever works best for their business model,” said Michael Mullen, executive director of the Express Association of America, in an interview. Clearance off manifest would likely continue, using an item descriptor to identify cargo, with electronic filing expanded to other modes. CBP will also likely allow Section 321 entries in the Automated Broker Interface using the 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule number, Mullen said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 29 - Feb. 4:
A federal court in Chicago ordered a freight forwarder to refund $5,838,992.21 in unpaid antidumping and countervailing duties to Union Pacific after finding in December that it improperly kept payments intended to be used as cash deposits (see 1712210020). Though Pactrans was not a licensed broker, a power of attorney signed by Union Pacific created a fiduciary duty on the part of the forwarder to ensure the cash deposits were transmitted to CBP by the broker, the Northern Illinois U.S. District Court had said (see 1712210020).