The Feb. 24 ACE deployment (see 1802260057) is a "a significant achievement for CBP, the trade community and [partner government agencies] who have worked tirelessly to implement the 'single window' for over 15 years," Acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in a news release. “While it has been a long road from planning to implementation, a streamlined import and export processing system has already proven to be a tremendous benefit for international trade with an estimated $28 million in processing efficiencies for CBP and an estimated $52 million savings for industry in FY2017,” he said.

International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for Feb. 20-23 in case they were missed.

CBP released its first version of ACE outage guidelines, the agency said in a CSMS message.
"CBP expects that this will allow trade partners to better understand their role in maintaining the flow of trade during ACE system interruptions and will serve as a basis for their individual downtime policies and procedures," the agency said. The agency said in documents for the Feb. 28 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting that it planned to release the downtime document by the end of the month (see 1802210034).

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​

CBP’s weekend deployment of drawback, reconciliation and liquidation in ACE was “successful,” though some hurdles remain before systems are running as intended, CBP officials said on a pair of phone calls with trade stakeholders held Feb. 26. The deployment marked a “significant milestone,” being the last of the major scheduled “core” ACE deployments, said Deborah Augustin, executive director of CBP’s Trade Transformation Office. “At this time, all import manifest, cargo release, post-release and export functionality we had scheduled for delivery in 'core' ACE is now available in ACE,” she said.

Drawback filers will likely face a period of at least four to six months under interim procedures once drawback transitions to ACE over the Feb. 24 weekend, Michael Cerny of Sandler Travis said during a Feb. 23 webinar. Though CBP finished talks with the trade community nearly a year ago, proposed regulations drafted by CBP on drawback processes under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 continue to languish in the interagency review process, so filers will begin life in the new framework under a “draft guidance” issued by CBP on Feb. 9 (see 1802120020).

Coming new drawback processes under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (see 1802120020) are the source of "considerable concern," said Steven Baker, a lawyer who chairs the Customs Committee of the American Institute for International Steel, in a blog post. While the drawback processing is set to move to ACE on Feb. 24, "not all functions are supported in ACE, and as of this writing no regulations have been issued," Baker said.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​

Several partner government agencies (PGAs) have now confirmed in writing that they will attach their message sets to e214 electronic Foreign-Trade Zone admissions filings once they are available in ACE, trade associations said in a Feb. 21 letter to CBP. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (for both its core and Lacey Act data sets), the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have all said they will switch from current PGA message set filing at the time of type 06 entry/entry summary filing to at time of admission to the zone once the e214 is deployed, the letter said.

CBP posted its cutover plans for the transition of reconciliation and drawback into ACE over the Feb. 24 weekend, it said in a CSMS message. The agency plans to turn off both in the legacy Automated Commercial System at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 23, and any submissions to ACS after that time will be rejected, it said. The Feb. 24 deployment also includes liquidation, as well as new e-bond and Cuba import filing capabilities (see 1802080023).