Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:

There are ongoing discussions of how to best pay for future development of the International Trade Data System and ACE, said Christa Brzozowski, deputy assistant secretary for trade policy at the Department of Homeland Security. "We've been having some interesting discussions with [the Office of Management and Budget] on funding models, how to make this something of a collective funding scheme to make sure we can do more than maintenance and current operations and really accommodate trade, PGA and CBP needs in the out years," she said. "Institutionalizing the governance and the funding structure are critical elements," she said. Brzozowski described some of the future considerations for ITDS and ACE during the July 27 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting in Boston. While the Border Interagency Executive Council is focused on ITDS, "frankly there's a lot of fatigue on this issue," so "we need to push past that going into the next year," she said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is establishing formaldehyde emissions standards and import certifications for composite wood products, in a final rule (here) that awaits publication in the Federal Register. Under the new regulations, required under a 2010 law that amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (see 10070920), importers will have to submit TSCA certifications for covered products, including for "articles," which are not usually covered by TSCA certification requirements. The final rule also sets recordkeeping requirements for manufacturers and importers, and creates a new third-party certification system for composite wood products. Compliance with the final rule is required in one year for most provisions, two years for importer certification requirements, and seven years for some provisions that apply to laminated wood.

Treasury's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is seeking comments on a proposed new information collection method it is submitting to the Office of Management and Budget that will allow it to collect import data through ACE, it said (here). The information collection for the ACE alternate method form would cover what data to submit through ACE under the "alternate" electronic (i.e., in lieu of paper) method for submitting partner government agency (PGA) message set data. Most of the information TTB will require in ACE is already required by TTB regulations, but there are also additional requirements, TTB said. Comments should be submitted by Aug. 27.

ACE AESDirect will undergo an outage from 10 p.m. July 30 to 4 a.m. July 31, the Census Bureau said in an email. Filers may submit shipments under the AES Downtime Policy, which must be filed along with any new AES transactions in ACE AESDirect after the system comes back online. Census advised AES Downtime export users to contact the port of export before filing, and in lieu of an AES Proof of Filing citation, to use the AES Downtime citation, consisting of the phrase “AESDOWN,” individual company Filer ID and date.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:

CBP will stop accepting protests filed through the Automated Broker Interface (ABI) to the Automated Commercial System (ACS) next month, the agency said in a notice (here). CBP previously said it would require electronic protests to be filed through the ACE protest module as of Aug. 27 (see 1607070032). "The ACE Protest Module is an internet-based processing module which allows a filer to submit an electronic protest to ACE for processing by CBP," it said.

There's no imminent plan to explicitly eliminate the ability to file on paper and electronically as part of the ACE transition, Cynthia Whittenburg, deputy assistant commissioner in CBP's Office of International Trade, said during a conference call with reporters July 27. CBP previously sought input on prohibiting filings that are a combination of electronic and paper filings (see 1510090017), which raised some concerns within industry (see 1511100030). While that is still the goal further down the line, the processing improvements of using ACE alone is seen by CBP as incentive enough to make such a regulation unnecessary for now, she said.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 18-22 in case they were missed.