PHILADELPHIA -- Getting the funding for ACE 2.0 is the biggest challenge, the executive director of CBP's trade transformation office said. He said the agency was unsuccessful in the budgetary process, and asked industry to lobby their representatives for funding.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

PHILADELPHIA -- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the "de minimis exception" impacts CBP's work to stop illegal drugs and other contraband from entering the United States.

PHILADELPHIA -- With the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act's second anniversary coming up in June, DHS will be releasing a new implementation strategy -- including adding new priority sectors, beyond cotton, tomatoes and polysilicon, the material integral to solar panels.

PHILADELPHIA -- When CBP ran an audit to estimate how many packages that enter under de minimis violate Customs laws, it found about 9% did, either through misclassification, insufficient documentation, or more serious violations, like smuggling narcotics.

PHILADELPHIA -- Bill Reinsch, a senior scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner AnnMarie Highsmith that he is pessimistic Congress will vote on any trade bill, whether liberalizing trade, as in the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program or the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, or restricting it, as in changes to de minimis eligibility or changes to trade remedy laws.

House Ways and Means Committee members, in hallway interviews at the Capitol, said they're concerned that the Senate's unwillingness to take up a tax package that passed the House with more than 350 votes will delay movement on bringing back the Generalized System of Preferences trade benefits program.

The auto industry is grappling with a range of questions about how the EU’s upcoming forced labor-related rules will affect their supply chains, especially for individual car components, an auto industry official and lawyer said this week.

Although the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee has been pushing to exclude Chinese goods from de minimis (see 2403060089), interviews this week with a half-dozen members of the 42-person committee show the momentum for changing the law is fairly muted.

The funding package that is expected to pass Congress later this week adds $19,968,000 in funding for DHS to detect and detain goods produced with forced labor over the amount in last year's budget. The funding, which is meant to be spent before the end of September this year, dedicates $114.5 million annually to enforcing the ban on the importation of goods made with forced labor.