U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS Message #11-000254 to provide additional information on the Fiscal Year 2011 refined sugar tariff rate quota (TRQ). On September 30, 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased (150,000 STRV) the FY 2011 refined sugar TRQ and extended the reporting period until November 30, 2011 as an attempt to make provisions for risks associated with adverse weather and supply disruptions. CBP, understanding the necessity for the trade community to stay abreast on the availability of that supply, will post the Global and Canadian balances on the HQ Quota telephone line (202.863.6560) daily after 3:00 pm.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS #11-000253 to announce that the 2011 ACE Customer Satisfaction Survey is being extended until midnight October 26, 2011 instead of October 19. CBP encourages all importers, brokers, carriers and other trade community users of the system to take the voluntary 5-10 minute survey, so that it can formally gauge the areas where ACE is doing well and where improvement is needed. A large response will ensure that there is greater statistical validity to the results. ACE portal users can access the survey here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently posted the presentations used at the September 22-23, 2011 Trade Support Network plenary meeting in Arlington, VA. The postings include presentations given by CBP, APHIS, FDA, FSIS, USCG and the TSN Trade Leadership Council (TLC). This ITT summary is being reissued as an editing error dropped the text on M1.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the following news releases:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the weekly foreign currency exchange rate multipliers for the week ending October 14, 2011.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted the October 2011 customs broker exam and answer key.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a courtesy listing of 685 approved "doing business as" (DBA) trade names used by customs brokers.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its October 2011 update on its progress with the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). CBP discusses deployed ACE capabilities and provides status updates of various ACE projects, such as Document Image System (DIS), cargo release, e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1), etc. With this update, CBP states that it plans to discontinue dissemination of the ISF reports via email as of December 31, 2011. In addition, CBP states that the technology to support the collection of the PGA Message Set, which was targeted for release in October 2011, will be pushed out to November 2011 due to external factors.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently posted the presentations used at the September 22-23, 2011 Trade Support Network plenary meeting in Arlington, VA. The postings include presentations given by CBP, APHIS, FDA, FSIS, USCG and the TSN Trade Leadership Council (TLC). Please note that the version of this notice published on October 17, 2011 was incomplete due to an editing error. See ITT's Online Archives 11100753 for complete version of this notice.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing that on October 18, 2011, it will host a free webinar on CBP’s project to simplify procedures related to entry and financial processes. The one-hour webinar will provide the trade community with the goals, status, and timeline of the project and conclude with a question and answer session.