U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its ranking of priority ACE projects, including those that are in the works and planned. According to CBP, the development of DIS, PGA Message Set, PGA Interoperability, and some Export work is fully funded and Cargo Release/Simplified Entry is partially funded. After that, unless future funding is available for the continuous development of new capacities, ACE development work will cease.
The Court of International Trade dismissed a claim by NSK Corporation, the U.S. affiliate of a global ball bearings manufacturer based in Japan, challenged the constitutionality of the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (CDSOA or Byrd Amendment). NSK Corp. claimed that it was unlawfully denied affected domestic producer (ADP) status, which would have qualified it to receive distributions for fiscal years 2005-2007. .
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an interim rule, effective March 15, 2012, that amends CBP regulations to implement the customs-related provisions of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KFTA). Comments must be received by May 18, 2012.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has revised and expanded its 2005 “Guidance for Certificates of Reimbursement” for antidumping (AD) duties in order to provide updated information on protests, the option for paperless filing using ACE, and provide additional information regarding blanket certificates, related parties, deemed liquidations, and certificates for companion countervailing (CV) duties.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) posted the following notices from March 8-14, 2012 (may have to click twice on source documents for proper viewing):
On March 8, 2012, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposed rule to revise the regulations and bring them in line with CITES decisions. Proposed revisions include revised definitions for coral, cultivar, and sturgeon caviar; revised labeling and tagging for elephant ivory, vicuna, fur, and sturgeon caviar; processing changes for CITES documents, changes to how some CITES specimens may be used after import, etc. Comments are due by April 9, 2012.
On March 13, 2012, President Obama signed H.R. 4105 into law, amending 19 USC 1671 so that the countervailing duties on non-market economy (NME) countries, such as China and Vietnam, can continue to apply and adjustments of antidumping margins for double counting can be made. These changes were needed in light of certain court and WTO rulings.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said an FCC order’s “unintended consequences” could make some emergency alert system messages originated in a FEMA-designed format useless. The agency petitioned the commission to revisit a January order (CD Jan 12 p8) on the new Common Alerting Protocol format to reverse its ban on text-to-speech EAS warnings. By not allowing such warnings where government agencies originating alerts send scripts of the warnings without also transmitting audio, some transmissions may not go through at all and others may only have warning tones and no actual message, the petition said. “No EAS Participants transmit the full detail alert message and the public is left to make life saving decisions based upon a 90-character” alert from participating wireless carriers “alone,” under one scenario.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a document on the trade benefits from the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). ACE is the commercial trade processing system being developed to become the "single window" through which international traders will electronically provide all information needed by federal agencies for the import of cargo. CBP states that the benefits of ACE continue to grow as new capabilities are developed and deployed. The document lists the trade benefits based on functionality currently available in ACE and are organized by trade sector in addition to, in some cases, ACE Portal role.