TUCSON, Arizona -- As CBP develops its 21st Century Customs Framework, the role of the customs broker will change in ways that reflect the new era of economic competition and “national economic security” concerns, Brandon Lord, deputy executive director of CBP’s Office of Trade Policy and Programs, said May 3 at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference.

TUCSON, Arizona -- Despite initial concerns around national permits that focused on the devaluation of the customs broker license and reduced hiring of licensed brokers, the industry should be more concerned with new responsible supervision and control criteria included in CBP’s June 2020 proposed rule amending Part 111 to eliminate district permits (see 2006040037), according to panelists speaking at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference on May 3.

TUCSON, Arizona -- CBP’s development of its next generation ACE 2.0 system will require yet more implementation work from customs brokers just years after the development of the original ACE, but is necessary to avoid the pain of waiting too long to update a legacy system, as happened with the agency’s Automated Commercial System, said Brandon Lord, deputy executive director at CBP’s Office of Trade Policy & Programs.

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The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a notice May 3 that asks companies that benefit from the Section 301 tariffs on List 1 to tell USTR if they think the tariffs should continue. They can comment May 7 to July 5. Companies that benefit from the tariffs on List 2 can comment June 24 to Aug. 22.

TUCSON, Arizona -- The Consumer Product Safety Commission aims to begin a pilot program in 2023 with wide participation from importers to test “e-filing” of certificate of compliance data elements, with an eye toward making the PGA message set mandatory in 2025, said Sabrina Keller, deputy director of CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance, during a panel of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference May 2.

Florida's two U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, introduced a bill that would require publicly traded companies to report any transactions with Chinese companies on the entity list or that are designated as military-industrial complex companies, and report their sourcing and due diligence activities for supply chains if their imported products have been "directly linked to products utilizing forced labor from Xinjiang, China." The senators, both Republican, announced the bill April 29, and said they have four other Republican co-sponsors.

House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., would also be open to lowering or lifting tariffs on at least some Ukrainian goods, he said during a hallway interview at the Capitol on April 28. Neal said he had just left a meeting with the president of Georgia, and she had told him the U.S. support for Ukraine needed to last. The U.K. has lifted tariffs on all Ukrainian imports, and the EU's parliament is considering doing the same.

FDA will require that food importers transmit their Data Universal Numbering System number for entries of food subject to the Foreign Supplier Verification Program regulations beginning July 24, it said in a guidance document released April 27. The agency will on that date end a grace period that has allowed importers to instead transmit “UNK” for unknown instead of a DUNS number since 2018 (see 1705100028).

Among the 28 motions to instruct for negotiations that will be considered next Tuesday and Wednesday in the Senate, five would affect trade, including one that supports the establishment of an inspector general for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.