ACE AESDirect will undergo an outage from 10 p.m. July 30 to 4 a.m. July 31, the Census Bureau said in an email. Filers may submit shipments under the AES Downtime Policy, which must be filed along with any new AES transactions in ACE AESDirect after the system comes back online. Census advised AES Downtime export users to contact the port of export before filing, and in lieu of an AES Proof of Filing citation, to use the AES Downtime citation, consisting of the phrase “AESDOWN,” individual company Filer ID and date.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP will stop accepting protests filed through the Automated Broker Interface (ABI) to the Automated Commercial System (ACS) next month, the agency said in a notice (here). CBP previously said it would require electronic protests to be filed through the ACE protest module as of Aug. 27 (see 1607070032). "The ACE Protest Module is an internet-based processing module which allows a filer to submit an electronic protest to ACE for processing by CBP," it said.
There's no imminent plan to explicitly eliminate the ability to file on paper and electronically as part of the ACE transition, Cynthia Whittenburg, deputy assistant commissioner in CBP's Office of International Trade, said during a conference call with reporters July 27. CBP previously sought input on prohibiting filings that are a combination of electronic and paper filings (see 1510090017), which raised some concerns within industry (see 1511100030). While that is still the goal further down the line, the processing improvements of using ACE alone is seen by CBP as incentive enough to make such a regulation unnecessary for now, she said.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for July 18-22 in case they were missed.
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
CBP’s July 23 deadline for most remaining entry types in ACE passed without any major problems, although the agency continues to monitor a handful of issues causing rejects for some quota transactions, CBP officials said on the agency’s July 25 daily technical call. Despite concerns over deployment of unproven quota systems in ACE with the legacy Automated Commercial System no longer available as a backup (see 1607220064), the agency had a “relatively quiet” weekend, and continues “to work through some of the issues we have encountered,” said Seven Zaccaro, client representative branch chief in the ACE business office
CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
Concerns over potential technical and procedural issues related to the deployment of as-yet-unproven quota systems in ACE are leaving customs brokers uncertain on the eve of the July 23 ACE deadline for most remaining entry types, said brokers in interviews. A lack of real world testing and changes to quota business practices means some brokers aren’t entirely sure what’s going to happen after the deadline. The uncertainty is compounded by the simultaneous decommissioning of legacy Automated Commercial System, which leaves filers without a fallback that has been particularly valuable in the truck environment.