Altana VP: Passport Tech Offering Is Harbinger of 'Next-Generation' Trusted Trade
CBP's and data technology provider Altana's foray into developing a technology tool that can provide both regulators and stakeholders with deep visibility into products' supply chains may serve as a foundation for what trade facilitation might look like in the future, Altana's vice president and head of trade compliance Amy Morgan asserted in a Dec. 2 webinar hosted by the American Association of Exporters and Importers.
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Altana describes its AI-informed "passport" product offering as "a shareable, digital record of a product's origin story, built to streamline customs clearance with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reward trusted traders," according to the company's website.
"This isn't just a pilot. It is the early shape of what next-generation trusted trader programs will look like in a world where trust is built" and not heavily relying on company attestations, Morgan said. Altana had announced in October that its passport offering would be part of CBP's Global Business Identifier (GBI) program (see 2510010058). The company said then that the product would allow companies to track their products' supply chains and share that information with CBP before manufacturing or arrival at the U.S. border.
Under the old system, CBP would enforce import compliance entry by entry, Morgan said. But the heightened scrutiny of imports -- brought about to prevent forced labor and illegal transshipment or to collect additional duties -- has caused both regulators and the trade to discover that the tools they've been using are outdated, according to Morgan.
"Trade scrutiny is rising faster than the systems built to manage it. Enforcement is no longer waiting for goods to arrive at the border. It starts upstream. It reaches into our suppliers and our suppliers' suppliers, and it influences our sourcing decisions and our product design and our material choices," Morgan said. "Customs isn't just asking what we import anymore. They're asking for the evidence behind every claim and the reactive shipment by shipment compliance model that most trade teams still operate was never built for this type of scrutiny."
Regulators and the trade can adapt to these additional needs by using technology to redefine what information the trade provides to regulators, which in turn can fine-tune regulators' enforcement capabilities by providing deeper visibility to products' supply chains, she continued.
While traditional trade tools have focused on single transactions, the passport aims to build a product network that collects data from multiple sources on materials and suppliers, while also providing access to multiple stakeholders and regulators, according to Morgan.
The passport acts like "a [digital] fingerprint that's tied to a specific product containing all that verified intelligence we already need to support every compliance, claim, classification, logic and supporting evidence, supplier, tiers, preference, qualification, any forced labor indicators, documents -- all this auditable information that we already need can now live in one place and be communicated that way," Morgan said.
Within the tool, AI can track updates to corresponding regulations as well as advise on possible procurement pathways that would prevent a product running into forced labor or other concerns, according to Morgan and Curran Boomer, Altana senior product manager.
The data that companies provide can be used as "a jumping-off point for running our AI models. ... We'll suggest suppliers that exist upstream in your value chain," and "you can actually see the specific transactions that are causing us to suggest that this entity is upstream," Boomer said. Meanwhile, the technology offering "can screen your upstream value chains for compliance risk related to broad sanctions, countermeasures, export controls, financial sanctions, forced labor, special entities," Boomer continued. "All of the visibility that we've gotten from these sources of information call out where risk exists."
Morgan said Altana's partnership with CBP "is focused on moving enforcement from reactive post-arrival review to earlier fact-based collaboration to suss out those low-risk goods." Importers can also share their products' passports with CBP before those goods arrive in the country, and CBP can review and "see deep inside the product, and both sides can resolve questions earlier in the product's lifecycle, instead of during detentions or exams," she continued.
"For CBP, that means better context, better evidence, better prioritization of what actually needs their attention, their scrutiny. And for importers, it means earlier feedback, fewer surprises at the border and more predictability around admissibility," Morgan said.
Once CBP validates the product's "passport," the passport identifier can travel with future entries of that product through that GBI framework, and that's what creates that global entry, Morgan continued.
"Think of it like trusted credentials in your daily life. You don't reintroduce yourself every time you show your boarding pass or a concert ticket or your office badge. The system already knows how to trust you. A product passport brings that same logic to our products at the border," Morgan said.