U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its October 2011 update on its progress with the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). CBP discusses deployed ACE capabilities and provides status updates of various ACE projects, such as Document Image System (DIS), cargo release, e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1), etc. With this update, CBP states that it plans to discontinue dissemination of the ISF reports via email as of December 31, 2011. In addition, CBP states that the technology to support the collection of the PGA Message Set, which was targeted for release in October 2011, will be pushed out to November 2011 due to external factors.
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.
In the September-October 2011 ACE Trade Account Owner (TAO) Update, U.S. Customs and Border Protection advises recipients of Importer Security Filing (ISF) Progress Reports that it will no longer email these reports after December 31, 2011.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a press release stating that it and the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, Inc. are encouraging international traders to begin moving their import business process to CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment. "Our partnership with the NCBFAA will certainly help expedite the industry's transition to ACE,” said Allen Gina, assistant commissioner for CBP's Office of International Trade. "With the NCBFAA's active involvement, we expect to see ACE transactions increase dramatically."
Speaking on behalf of the NCBFAA ACE Strategy Task Group, NCBFAA President Jeffrey Coppersmith stated his strong belief that it is no longer a question of whether to migrate to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), but when, and that when is now. Regardless of emotions concerning the pace of development, it isn’t feasible to wait for ACE to be finished before attempting to use it nor is it rational to continue to believe that it will be abandoned. While much work remains to be done, he stated that CBP has recently begun to show good progress and has adopted essentially all of the recommendations for functional development outlined in the NCBFAA White Papers. It is time for the brokerage industry to support that development.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a document that provides additional guidance on the Entry Summary capabilities deployed in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) in 2009. This guidance covers release on an ACE entry summary and receiving information on entry summaries filed in ACE.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials recently stated that the agency is "on track" to fully deploy e-Manifest: Ocean and Rail (M1) at the end of January 2012. The agency has done a lot of testing and is ahead of schedule internally to meet this deadline. In addition, a group of three carriers is waiting for the go-ahead to send manifests in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), which can be set up in a three-week time frame.
The International Trade Data System has issued a draft report for trade comment by November 15, 2011, on the results of three pilot studies conducted to validate the business case for using e-commerce data, such as global product numbers/codes and electronic product catalogs, to improve product visibility at international borders. The report shows that the three product sets on which the pilots focused - toys, cut flowers, and meat and poultry1 -- all benefited from the use of such data and could save importers millions of dollars. The report also states that a new ACE PGA Message Set will be implemented in 2012 to pass e-commerce data to participating government agencies (PGAs).
CBP has posted the following presentations, draft COAC recommendations, etc. for its COAC meeting on October 4, 2011:
The Trade Support Network’s Integrated Communications Subcommittee1 issued an overview and held a recent press conference on the TSN plenary held on September 22-23, 2011. During the plenary, CBP discussed a two-part “simplified entry” proposal which includes simplified release (subset of ISF + some additional data) and simplified (periodic) summary.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS #11-000223 to announce two two technical seminars for trade software developers. The purpose of these seminars will be to discuss upcoming programming changes for new functionality scheduled to be delivered as part of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Parties should notify CBP of their interest in the seminars by September 30, 2011.