PHILADELPHIA -- CBP has not issued any withhold release orders for goods unrelated to Uyghur forced labor since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act passed in late 2021. Eric Choy, the CBP official whose office oversees the ban on goods made with forced labor, said that targeting forced labor abuses outside of China "is something that we're definitely reprioritizing resources [for], to focus in on those efforts." Choy, who is executive director of Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate, said in an interview during the CBP Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit last week that he expects there will be a WRO announced before October.

CBP is implementing cargo messaging to communicate with the entry filer on shipments that have "vague noncompliant cargo descriptions," the agency said in an April 1 CSMS message.

The Court of International Trade on April 1 granted the New Zealand government's motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction banning its fish exports in a challenge to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2020 findings that New Zealand's standards for its West Coast North Island inshore trawl and set net fisheries were comparable to U.S. regulations.

PHILADELPHIA -- The glacial pace of developing electronically submitted export manifests is finally picking up, participants on a CBP export modernization panel said, with Tom Pagano, outbound enforcement policy branch chief, saying "we're really close."

PHILADELPHIA -- CBP officials who clear or reject packages from importers seeking to show there is no Uyghur labor anywhere in the supply chain of a detained product said it's not enough to assemble a paper trail of every transaction and vendor from raw material to finished good.

CBP is in the process of selecting accreditors for its continuing education requirement for customs brokers, said Shari McCann, director of commercial operations for CBP's Office of Trade, during a session at the CBP Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit on March 28.

The Commerce Department last week issued new antidumping and countervailing duty regulations, which, most notably, lifted the prohibition on the consideration of transnational subsidies in CVD cases (see 2403210070).

PHILADELPHIA -- Getting the funding for ACE 2.0 is the biggest challenge, the executive director of CBP's trade transformation office said. He said the agency was unsuccessful in the budgetary process, and asked industry to lobby their representatives for funding.

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PHILADELPHIA -- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the "de minimis exception" impacts CBP's work to stop illegal drugs and other contraband from entering the United States.