CBP is unable provide further information as to the data elements and conditions through which CBP can share data from the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), said a CBP spokesman. "We are not able to provide more detail regarding the data elements and the conditions under which the FMC may use them beyond what is contained in the release," he said.

The Customs Law Committee of the American Bar Association released its annual year in review, published in conjunction with the Southern Methodist University Law School. The article includes summaries of some of the major regulatory and court actions in 2012 that affected customs law.

Improvements can be made to CBP’s infrastructure and staff needs, as well as to the transparency of its staff allocation processes, a report on commercial vehicle wait times by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. For the report, released July 24, GAO was asked to examine the reliability of CBP wait time data, visit six U.S.-Mexico land border crossings and analyze CBP documentation. The GAO analysis was intended to help CBP officials implement the agency’s existing mechanisms to improve the data’s overall usefulness and reduce the current burden of manually collecting data, GAO said.

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the Commerce Department posted to CBP's website July 23, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at addcvd.cbp.gov. (CBP occasionally adds backdated messages without otherwise indicating which message was added. ITT will include a message date in parentheses in such cases.)

CBP is extending the comment period to Aug. 26 for an existing information collection for the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with a change to the burden hours.

The Federal Maritime Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with CBP on July 19 agreeing to share trade data within the International Trade Data System (ITDS), said CBP in a press release (here). The sharing of Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) data will help "strengthen the balance of facilitation and enforcement regarding the regulation of ocean carriers and other entities involved in trade," said CBP. The agreement means that CBP can transfer ACE data directly to the FMC to help it fulfill its "statutory and regulatory duties and responsibilities" and conserve resources within both agencies, said CBP. The agreement "specifies the specific data elements to be shared, the legal authority of FMC to receive the data and the conditions under which FMC may use, store or share the information," said CBP

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related issues:

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages from the Commerce Department posted to CBP's website July 22, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. The messages are available by searching for the listed CBP message number at addcvd.cbp.gov. (CBP occasionally adds backdated messages without otherwise indicating which message was added. ITT will include a message date in parentheses in such cases.)

CBP issued its weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of July 22. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, and tobacco; and certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, OFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, OFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying textile articles and/or other articles; the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc.

CBP posted a July 22 version of its CF 1400 (Record of Vessel in Foreign Trade Entrances) electronic query report of the Vessel Management System (VMS), in accordance with 19 CFR 4.95, organized by entrances. CBP also posted a version of its CF 1401 (Record of Vessel in Foreign Trade Clearances) electronic query report of the VMS, in accordance with 19 CFR 4.95, organized by clearances.