CPSC Increasing Certificate of Compliance Enforcement Efforts

Importers are seeing an increase in requests for certificates of compliance by the Consumer Product Safety Commission due to a general effort to enhance enforcement as well as recent targeted sampling on toys, said Jim Joholske, CPSC’s acting director of import surveillance, during a Feb. 9 conference call with members of the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

The agency’s decision to ask for certificates more often stems from the fact that certificate requirements have now been in place since 2008, meaning importers should by now be familiar with the law, said Joholske. “What you’re seeing in some instances is increase in enforcement” of certificate requirements, he said, responding to concerns from RILA members that they’re being asked more often. “We are ramping up enforcement in those areas to ensure compliance.”

CPSC’s enhanced targeting of toys, on the other hand, is a temporary program that recently ended, so importers of toys should see requests for certificates drop, said Joholske. The commission had been working with CBP to gauge the level of compliance with certificate requirements, targeting heading 9503 in particular. CPSC has enough data at this point, so has ended the targeting program and is set to examine the data it collected.

An upcoming CPSC pilot to test electronic filing of certain product safety data in the Automated Commercial Environment is still slated to begin in July, said Joholske. The commission has now selected and is working with eight of the nine potential pilot participants, he said. CPSC staff are currently reworking the agency’s prototype registry to account for the move from 10 to five required data elements, as mandated by a vote in August (see 1508130016). The “alpha” e-filing pilot is set to wrap up in December, after which CPSC staff intends to launch a second “beta” e-filing pilot with more participants.

Meanwhile, the agency is closely watching Congress to see what will happen with its proposed user fee for imports. The user fee, which has been in previous budget proposals but “does not seem to have gained much traction,” would allow CPSC to increase its staffing at ports and fully implement its Risk Assessment Methodology targeting program. If the fee is not approved, CPSC will continue to have to “maximize resources,” hiring staff when extra money is found and making incremental improvements to the RAM.