CBP's Aguilar Says CEEs Present "Tremendous Opportunity" for Collaboration with Industry

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection's establishment of Centers for Excellence and Expertise will be beneficial beyond a single agency, industry or company, said CBP Acting Commissioner David Aguilar, speaking at the American Association of Exporters and Importers conference June 4. Such efforts mark the institutionalizing of a "new culture," he said. "We're building the future," he said.

There are currently two CEEs, one for Electronics in Long Beach, Calif., and one for Pharmaceuticals in New York City. CBP announced plans for two more CEEs, an Automotive and Aerospace center in Detroit and a Petroleum, Natural Gas and Minerals center in Houston, May 10, but locations of five others scheduled to be completed by the end of FY 2013. The remaining five locations for CEEs are yet to be finalized.

"If we are going to be successful, we have to engage as partners," he said. "We have a responsibility. We are your regulators. By statute there are certain things we have to do. Are you going to like it all the time? No." At the same time there are "informal responsibilities" that drive CBP to work as a good partner with the trade community, he said. International partnerships are necessary to align and to make trade faster, safer, cheaper and more predictable, he said.

"ACE is the future," he said. CBP has made tremendous strides, including on eManifest: Air and Sea (M1) and the document imaging system. Challenges remain in dealing with government and the bureaucracy of Other Government Agencies (OGAs), though "we are coming together" as "one government," he said. "We are not quite where we should be, but we are working in that direction," he said.

The austere budget environment won't constrain CBP's innovation, co-creation and transformation, he said. "We'll look at ways to leverage investments," that have already been made, he said. The International Trade Data System (ITDS) is making strides, though not "great strides," to be serve the American public, he said. A system is needed to support every type and size company, said Aguilar.

(See ITT's Online Archive 12051031 for announcement of the two coming CEEs. See ITT's Online Archives 12051809 for summary of Aguilar's recent testimony during House May 17 hearing on Customs issues).