U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS #11-000232 to announce that the 2011 ACE Customer Satisfaction Survey is now available and voluntary feedback is requested from the Trade community. ACE portal users can access the survey here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a final determination that the United States is the country of origin of certain Ethernet switches for purposes of U.S. government procurement. The switches are assembled in China and programmed in the U.S. using U.S. software.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated list of companies/persons offering sea Automated Manifest System data processing services to the trade community.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is seeking comments by December 5, 2011 on its extension of an existing information collection concerning the Entry and Manifest of Merchandise Free of Duty, Carrier’s Certificate and Release (CBP Form 7523). CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the burden hours or to the information being collected.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an "Implementation Guide for Messaging Interface between ITDS Trade Partners and CBP Document Image System" that contains a description of the message formats, communication mechanisms, validations, and business scenarios that will assist trade partners in building their interface with CBP's DIS system. The Guide states the initial goal of DIS is to accept images of documents that are currently submitted by the trade in hard-copy format to CBP and other government agencies as part of the cargo import process. Guide, dated September 19, 2011, version 1.2-4, available here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued the August 2011 TSN Monthly Committee Report which summarizes the Trade Support Network activities of its ten committees regarding the export manifest, broker management, the official notice of liquidation, drawback in ACE, etc.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated draft ACE Customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements (CATAIR) Chapter on Participating Goverment Agencies, which is referred to by ITDS as a "draft implementation guide." In addition, a related Appendix T containing the associated Code Tables (the codes and qualifiers for the PGA Message Set) has also been posted. The codes in Appendix T include those for the Lacey Act, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), as well as Food and Drug Affirmation of Compliance Codes.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing that registration is now open for CBP's free importer webinar on the new AM-100 Courtesy Notice of Liquidation report available in the ACE Portal. The webinar will include running and modifying the AM-100 report and saving it to one's favorites, modifying an existing account management report with data objects from the new Liquidation Header Details sub-folder, creating a report from scratch using the new Liquidation Header Details sub-folder and scheduling the report.

On September 27, U.S. Customs and Border Protection informed all filers that there was an issue with users creating and viewing Rail Line Release Entry Banks in the ACE Portal. CBP has now issued CSMS #11-000239 stating that the issue has been resolved and users may once again create and view Rail Line Release Entry Banks. CBP adds that as it continues to prepare for e-Manifest: Ocean and Rail, there may be intermittent outages when filers are unable to create and view their Rail Line Release Entry Banks.

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted to CBP's Web site as of October 5, 2011, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. These messages are available by searching on the listed CBP message number at http://addcvd.cbp.gov.