U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI and Truck Manifest CSMS message announcing that the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Certification Environment will be availablefrom 8:00 a.m. EDT on May 27, 2008 through 8:00 a.m. EDT on June 3, 2008. The previously announced outage for this period has been cancelled; CBP will notify the trade when it is rescheduled. (See ITT's Online Archives or 05/01/08 news, 08050135 1, for BP summary announcing that the ACE Certification Environment would be unavailable during this time period.)
In December 2007, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that the phased enforcement of mandatory Automated Commercial Environment electronic manifest: Truck for advance cargo information purposes at all land border ports in Alaska beginning February 11, 2008.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its report to Congress on the Automated Commercial Environment for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 (October 1, 2007 - December 31, 2007). The report provides an update on ACE accomplishments, challenges, fiscal status, and upcoming program milestones.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI CSMS message announcing that it will be conducting two ACE ABI CATAIR Technical Seminars for trade software developers only.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI and Truck Manifest CSMS message announcing that on May 1, 2008 a change was deployed in the Automated Commercial Environment Truck Manifest system to correct an issue involving Free and Secure Trade (FAST) Commercial Driver Licenses (CDL). Updates for expired FAST CDLs will now update inactive CDL records in ACE.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message stating that the requirements statements that are being circulated throughout the trade community are not the M2.1 Implementation Guidelines (ACE M2.1 AIR CAMIR Requirements/ACE M2.1 Implementation Guidelines). CBP states that these requirements sets are only the first high level set of documentation to be developed by CBP and are not intended to be used for programming,. According to CBP, these requirements were not intended for distribution. (CSMS 08-000071, dated 05/02/08, available at http://apps.cbp.gov/csms/viewmssg.asp?Recid=17079&page=&srch_argv=08-000071&srchtype=all&btype=&sortby=&sby=.)
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's April 2008 Automated Commercial Environment Trade Account Owner (TAO) monthly update, new bond query functionality was available in ACE effective April 12, 2008.
On April 22, 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials gave an Automated Commercial Environment update at an event hosted by the Baltimore Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association.
The Trade Support Network's Leadership Council and its Entry and Transition Committees ("TSN") have sent a letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection expressing its continuing concerns regarding CBP's plans to reduce the number of validations currently found in ACS when the ACE ESAR A2.2 drop is developed.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its "ACE on the Road" event schedule, which includes the following: