In late December 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that 13 CBP ports were starting to process rail and sea manifests in the "CBP port phase" of the ACE e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1) pilots, which began in November 2011.
Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)
The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) is the CBP's electronic system through which the international trade community reports imports and exports to and from the U.S. and the government determines admissibility.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has announced that FedEx Express has agreed to pay a $370,000 civil penalty to settle allegations that it committed six violations of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) relating to FedEx’s provision of freight forwarding services to exporters for unlicensed exports.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS message #11-000320 to provide the December 2011 Trade Account Owner (TAO) Update. This update features information on (i) Periodic Monthly Statement (PMS) dates for 2012, (ii) an update on the Simplified Entry Test, (iii) instructions for changing the trade account owner, (iv) recent updates for the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), and (v) a wrap up of ACE in 2011.
Government sources have confirmed that as reported in a September 2010 DHS OIG Information Technology Management Letter, routine maintenance of the Automated Commercial System (ACS) is increasingly difficult and expensive for a number of reasons, including its use of the COBAL programming language (a language that was created in 1959 and last revised in 1985).1 Sources add that a great deal of funding is also being used to sync ACS data with data in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that 13 CBP ports have started to process rail and sea manifests in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). The pilots for e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1), which began in November 2011, focus on transitioning full rail and sea manifest capability to ACE from the legacy Automated Manifest System of ACS.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America has issued a White Paper on the need for customs brokers to transition to ACE now, saying "it's necessary, it's desirable, and it's urgent." NCBFAA's Board believes that it is no longer a question of whether to migrate to ACE, but when, and states that it is not feasible to wait for ACE to be finished before attempting to use it, nor is it plausible to rely on it being abandoned. While much work remains to be done, CBP has recently begun to show good progress and has adopted essentially all of the recommendations for functional development outlined in the initial NCBFAA White Papers. It is time for the brokerage industry to support that development and accept the inevitable.
On December 16-17, 2011, the House and Senate agreed to the conference report on H.R. 2055, a bill to provide appropriations for most federal government agencies1 for the remainder of fiscal year 2012, including the DHS (which includes CBP, ICE, and TSA). Although H.R. 2055 contains $11.7 billion for CBP, an increase of $362 million over the FY 2011 level, FY 2012 funding would be reduced for automation modernization, international cargo screening, C-TPAT, etc. (Note that some press reports suggest that the President wants an agreement on the payroll tax cut before he will sign H.R. 2055 into law.)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its monthly Automated Commercial Environment Updates for December 2011. With this update, CBP lists new statistics on the growing number of ACE Secure Data Portal trade user accounts and the growing size of revenue collected via Periodic Monthly Statement (PMS). The number of approved entities authorized to file ACE entry summaries using the Automated Broker Interface (ABI) has also grown to 54 entities, with more than 710,959 ACE entry summaries having been filed since functionality was introduced in April 2009.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a fact sheet inviting sureties to create and maintain a free Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Secure Data Portal account and utilize the numerous ACE reports that are available. CBP states that a surety with a portal account can view and update their account data, including company information (e.g., physical address, mailing address, service of process address and points of contact). The Trade Account Owner (TAO) for the surety account type will also be able to create and maintain a current listing of their corporate surety powers of attorney (CSPOA).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a fact sheet inviting customs brokers to create and maintain a free Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Secure Data Portal account and utilize the numerous ACE reports that are available. CBP states that an ACE portal account provides brokers with the ability to obtain monthly statements, make payments on behalf of their ACE and non-ACE clients, communicate with CBP, and track import activity in a single, comprehensive, account-based view.