CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske plans to use his experience in bringing together disparate government interests during his time at the Office of National Drug Control Policy to coalesce the other government agencies toward improved import processing, he said in April 2 testimony before the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Homeland Security. There's already some progress toward that end and Kerlikowske has met with Food and Drug Administration executive Margaret Hamburg to begin a look at "where we could be more knowledgeable and perhaps more helpful," he said. He highlighted a South Texas port where the U.S. Agriculture Department trained and authorized some CBP agricultural inspectors to "act on behalf of USDA and make a decision to release cargo." The "same kind of template can be used with some of our other federal partners and I'm going to explore that very aggressively."

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

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

CBP chose OHL to be one of the three customs brokers to test the Automated Commerce Environment (ACE) cargo release pilot program, the company said in an email. CBP recently expanded the ACE Cargo release test, meant to improve the process for releasing cargo into commerce, relaxing security requirements (see 13110115) for participants and opening it up to ocean and rail modes (see 14013112).

CBP posted an updated version of its guidelines for the Centers for Excellence and Expertise. The updated version provides some new information on "Filer Responsibilities" and "Revenue Collection" among other things. CBP recently added new entry types to the CEEs (see 14030714) and said it would soon shift processing of full industries to the CEEs (see 14030613).

Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on March 25 the following voluntary recalls of imported products:

The Automated Export System (AES) postdeparture (Option 4) is erroneously generating a “Fatal Error 082: USPPI Not Option 4 Eligible/Shipment Rejected” message due to a glitch in the system that resulted from the recent AES move to the Automated Commercial Environment platform, the Census Bureau said. Census is working to resolve the issue.

CBP posted some more of the presentations given during the East Coast Trade Symposium March 6-7. The newly available presentations are:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission should hold a dialogue with the trade community before it finalizes new entry documentation requirements, said a group of trade associations a letter to the commission dated March 14. CPSC proposed in May 2013 to require product safety compliance certificates to be filed with CBP at time of entry (see 13051018). That is a “significant change to current supply chain operations and will have a major adverse impact on businesses’ operations,” said the letter. The changes merit that CPSC hold a public form “as soon as possible,” said the trade groups. “It is important for the CPSC to fully understand how the current entry process works and how this change would not only impact the industry, but Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the CPSC as well,” it said.

Companies have started to request permission to unload cargo destined for Vancouver at U.S. ports as the labor dispute and truck driver strike in the Canadian city continues, said CBP in a CSMS message. Truckers at Port Metro Vancouver have been on strike since Feb. 26, though there has been some progress toward resolving the dispute, said A.N. Deringer in a March 14 alert.