The Federal Maritime Commission has posted Commissioner Mario Cordero's remarks at the January 26, 2012 World Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Fuels Conference. He noted that there was a need for the use of LNG fuel to reduce emissions from the international maritime shipping industry. Despite challenges on the availability and use of LNG, he stated he is optimistic with the present scope of the environmental agenda and that the industry has high expectations for LNG as a clean fuel alternative. Lastly, he highlighted recent use and development of clean alternative fuels, such as with the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach's Clean Trucks Program.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a short, summarized timeline of ACE trade functionality that spans the years 2003 through 2012 and beyond.
In the January 25, 2012 issue of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bulletin (Vol. 46, No. 5), CBP proposes to correct the reasoning in two rulings and similar treatment on whether the blending of frozen broccoli and mixing of wine in a CBP bonded warehouse is a permissible manipulation under 19 USC 1562. The holdings of these two rulings are not proposed to change.
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is requesting comments by February 27, 2012 on revisions to information collections on drawback of taxes on certain tobacco products and bond changes. TTB is proposing to revise its tobacco drawback information collection to consolidate it with a tobacco bond information collection. TTB is also proposing to revise its bond information collection to reflect revised regulatory section numbers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which began processing GSP duty refunds in early December for entries made during the period of January 1, 2011 through November 4, 2011, now states that refunds have been issued for all automatic refund requests (i.e., for entries that were filed duty-paid via ABI with the SPI "A"), except for ones that "failed" this refund process, which are being sent to the ports where entry was made to be manually processed. The target date for CBP completing the refund process for the SPI "A" failed entries is the end of February 2012.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection for Field Operations in New York has issued an Informational Pipeline stating that, effective December 16, 2011, the JFK Entry Branch is responsible for processing all Refusal Notices issued by the Food and Drug Administration on entry summaries where the Harmonized Tariff Schedule number of the merchandise in question falls under the jurisdiction of a JFK Commodity Specialist Team (CST).
The Trade Support Network has issued its November 2011 Monthly Committee Report, which states it has updated and resubmitted its request1 for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to add programming that allows non-ABI filers to generate post summary (pre-liquidation) amendments and corrections using the ACE Portal for entry summary data initially filed and accepted in the ACE Portal.
Government sources have confirmed that as reported in a September 2010 DHS OIG Information Technology Management Letter, routine maintenance of the Automated Commercial System (ACS) is increasingly difficult and expensive for a number of reasons, including its use of the COBAL programming language (a language that was created in 1959 and last revised in 1985).1 Sources add that a great deal of funding is also being used to sync ACS data with data in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has made all sections of the Automated Broker Interface (ABI) user requirements available for download. CBP has posted a .zip file that contains 76 documents for Appendices A through U, Air In-Bond, Bill of Lading, Border Cargo Release, Drawback, Entry Summary, Importer Security Filing, Etc. Download all sections of ABI user requirements here.
Trade Support Network (TSN) Committee members are expected to meet on December 7, 2011 to discuss a number of Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) topics, including ongoing issues with Post Summary Correction (PSC), such as its functionality in the ACE Portal, the visibility of data elements for original entry summary filers, and the possibility of using the PSC framework to transition ACS drawback to ACE.