CBP reminded members of the trade community that starting March 1 the agency will require self-certification statements to be uploaded to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) for non-industrial diamonds with a weight of 1.0 carat or greater, diamond jewelry and unsorted diamonds, in a CSMS message on Feb. 29. The Office of Foreign Assets Control banned Russian diamonds of those types in February to comply with an executive order signed in December that prohibits the importation of diamonds, fish and seafood if they were produced "wholly or in part" in Russia, CBP said (see 2402080081 and 2312260061).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP posted the following documents ahead of the March 6 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting, which begins at 1 p.m. EST:
CBP needs to develop more transparency about an importer's ability to change their assigned Centers of Excellence and Expertise for both importers and their customs brokers, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) working group said in recommendations published Feb. 26 ahead of its March 6 meeting, where the recommendations will be voted on for approval (see 2402150016).
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP posted the following documents ahead of the March 6 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting, which begins at 1 p.m. EST:
The October 2023 customs broker licensing exam had a 34% pass rate, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee said in an issue paper released Feb. 26. It said 1,141 people took the test Oct. 25, with 932 of those taking the exam in-person at testing centers and 209 taking the exam remotely. CBP changed from five answer choices to four answer choices per question for the October 2023 exam, "to better align the CBLE with exam industry best practices," it said. The next exam was recently moved from April 24 to May 1 (see 2312120046). The issue paper was posted ahead of the COAC meeting on March 6 (see 2402260061).
In the Feb. 21 Customs Bulletin (Vol. 57, No. 7), CBP published a proposal to revoke and modify ruling letters concerning glass containers with lids.
CBP sent a questionnaire earlier this month to solar companies asking how they're guarding against the use of forced labor in their supply chains. The agency asked about the origins of solar modules, panels and related products, according to a draft of the survey obtained by Bloomberg. CBP wants invoices and other documents from distributors, wholesalers, exporters and resellers, as well as organizational charts and locations of production facilities.
CBP plans in FY 2024 to test the ability of ACE 2.0 to issue credentials, verify the origin of the credentials, and send data to partner government agencies through "tech demos" focused on e-commerce, food safety and natural gas trade using "global interoperability standards," the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee said. The COAC, in an ACE 2.0 Working Group issue paper on Feb. 26, said that in September CBP successfully tested global verifiable credentials and decentralized identifier standards with demos of steel and pipeline oil trade (see 2309130025).