On May 4, 2006, the Senate passed H.R. 4939, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill by a vote of 77 to 21. (The House passed its own version of H.R. 4939 on March 16, 2006.) As the House and Senate have passed different versions of H.R. 4939, a House-Senate conference will be convened to resolve those differences. (BP will be checking for international trade provisions in both House and Senate versions.) (Congressional Record, dated 05/04/06, available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r109:@FIELD(FLD003d)@FIELD(DDATE20060504).)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced its implementation of interim policy and operating procedures for processing Periodic Monthly Statement (PMS) rejections and liquidated damages in order to allow filers to make corrections to the entry summary prior to payment, without the concern that they will receive liquidated damages for removing the entry summary to make the change, etc.
New modified ACE EDI messages for Release 4 Truck Manifest. CBP has posted the following new modified ACE EDI messages for Release 4 Truck Manifest:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a notice announcing that the next meeting of the Departmental Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of Customs and Border Protection and Related Functions (COAC) will be held on May 16, 2006 in Washington, DC. (This committee was previously called the "Treasury Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of the U.S. Customs Service.")
On April 26, 2006, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on "Authorization of Customs and Trade Functions" in order to review the operation of customs and trade functions in the federal government. This review will assist the Finance Committee in preparing legislation to reauthorize those functions.
Updated as of April 27, 2006, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued another version of "ACE on the Road Event Scheduler," which replaces their April 18 version. The new version lists the following additional events (and removes all the April 2006 events from the scheduler):
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a general notice announcing the next two groups, or clusters, of ports to be deployed for the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)/National Customs Automation Program (NCAP) test concerning the transmission of automated truck manifest data for truck carrier accounts will be the cluster encompassing Laredo, TX and its bridges and a cluster of certain ports in California.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted a summary of changes to the Automated Export System (AES) Trade Interface Requirements (AESTIR) on its Web site, indicating that Version 1.0 was changed on April 12, 2006 and April 24, 2006 as follows:
The World Shipping Council (WSC) has sent a letter to the House Homeland Security Committee urging the Committee to defeat H.R. 4899, the "Sail Only if Scanned Act," if it is offered as an amendment when the Committee considers H.R. 4954, the SAFE Port Act. According to the WSC, H.R. 4899 would require every ocean shipping container to be "scanned" in a foreign port before the container is loaded on the vessel for shipment to the U.S. (WSC letter, dated 04/18/06, available at http://www.worldshipping.org/king_letter.pdf.)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued an updated notice entitled, "ACE on the Road" which lists various April-September 2006 meetings, seminars, conferences, and workshops concerning a range of Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) topics.