TFA to Have Major Impacts on Goods Movement, UPS Execs Say
The World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) should be relatively simple to implement, yet cargo clearance and release provisions will likely have significant impacts on global trade flows, UPS executives said during a Feb. 14 webinar on TFA implementation. A total of 108 countries have implemented the agreement, two short of the number needed for entry into force, according to the WTO. Overall, the agreement will provide transparency, predictability, procedural simplification and streamlining, and customs coordination and cooperation at a time when temporary barriers to trade are rising worldwide, including a tripling of CBP compliance audit surveys in the U.S. in 2016 over recent years, UPS Customs Brokerage Manager Greg Maddaleni said during the webinar.
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Also speaking during the webinar, UPS Trade Management Services Vice President Ron Shepherd said he expects procedures outlined in the TFA such as the separation of release from payment and customs pre-arrival clearance processing to have the most major effects on goods movement. Implementing the pre-arrival clearance provisions of the agreement should help eliminate multiday release wait times common in several of the 110 WTO nations anticipated in the near future to have ratified the agreement, he said. “That is a definite opportunity for those of you that are out there in the trade community of pre-arrival processing -- being able to look at 110 countries, at least, that offer those types of opportunities,” Shepherd said.
The TFA also calls for global customs authorities to allow release before entry-related payments, and companies will be able to “start to work on the material, put in your assembly line, or start in your different processes,” Shepherd said. The TFA’s requirement for countries to publish release times will presumably yield results, as the data should help nations track progress toward shorter release times, Shepherd said.
Other noteworthy areas of the TFA include single-window provisions that will eliminate the need for redundant paperwork and document submission, as well as language requiring mutual recognition of practices and policies across ports of entry for border-sharing countries, UPS International Public Affairs Manager Susan Zimmerman said during the webinar. But the overall implementation timeline for the agreement will be “quite complex,” she said, as developing and least developed countries have flexibility for when they must undertake certain provisions.
Speaking during the webinar from the World Customs Organization in Brussels, UPS Public Affairs Vice President Norm Schenk said the TFA basically constitutes a blueprint for implementation of best customs practices. The agreement’s provisions are not “reinventing the wheel,” as the U.S. is already party to the 107-member WCO Revised Kyoto Convention and practices the WCO’s “Guidelines for the Immediate Release of Consignments by Customs,” Schenk said. Rather than a free trade agreement, the TFA covers the actual framework for goods flows, and seeks to find opportunities for better efficiency and reduced costs, Maddaleni said.