CPSC e-filing, How to Get in Under the Wire Before Tariffs Weighing on Brokers
NEW YORK -- The Consumer Product Safety Commission's intent to require information from certificates of compliance to be filed in ACE next year is alarming brokers, according to Erin Williamson, vice president of customs brokerage at GEODIS USA.
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Williamson, who spoke on new issues in compliance at the U.S. Fashion Industry Association conference this week, said that it doesn't make sense to implement a final rule in 2025 when the enrollment of voluntary filers this year has been so delayed. CPSC began taking on companies in this large-scale pilot only at the end of October. Up to 2,000 companies can participate, and the agency is still taking applications (see 2411140044), but those applicants will have to wait until earlier applicants have been allowed to start trying out e-filing the certificate information.
Williamson warned that the CPSC e-filing regulations aren't limited to the partner government agency messaging set.
Many filers are telling Williamson "we do not have the bandwidth" to set up systems that will scrape certificate information and put each bit of information in the right place in ACE. If no programming is in place to do this by the time the requirement begins, companies will have to manually enter the information from the certificate into ACE, and if they have cargo with dozens or a hundred different certificates, she said, "it could delay entry of your goods."
Williamson said she hopes that CPSC officials "take the input from the trade that this is not easy to implement, and they push back to 2026, 2027," or, even 2028, though her chuckle before saying "2028" implied she thought that was unlikely.
Williamson also offered technical advice about how to handle higher tariffs in a second Trump administration. She said clients are asking how soon higher tariffs could arrive when Trump returns -- could they go up for entries on Jan. 21? She said that while she would like to see an implementation period that would give importers time to rush goods in before a hike, she remembered how List 3 tariffs under Section 301 went from 10% to 25% within one week.
Her advice, assuming the period between announcements and effective dates is very short, is that brokers get their entry dates filed as soon as possible, and "take care of everything later."
She noted that carriers can file a series of release dates for a single ship arrival, and that CBP will reject entry summaries that have release dates that were after the tariff went up. Williamson advised brokers to take screenshots of arrival information from the carrier, so you can contest those rejections. She said telling customs that there was a first release based on carrier arrival can be persuasive if you have the documentation to show that carrier arrival was before the tariff hike.