CBP Considering Live Entry Requirements for High-Risk Goods Across Industries

CBP's new use of live entry requirements for certain steel imports is seen as a potential model for other higher-risk products across all industries, said Troy Riley, executive director, commercial targeting and enforcement at the agency. Riley and other CBP officials discussed the new effort against antidumping/countervailing duty evasion with reporters on March 2. The White House announced the new live entry requirements when President Barack Obama signed customs reauthorization legislation into law last month (see 1602250021). Filers for goods subject to the requirements must provide all entry documents and duties before the cargo is released.

The agency began to use the requirements about a month ago, starting with cut-to-length carbon steel plate from China covered in an antidumping duty order, said Alexander Amdur, acting director of AD/CVD Policy and Programs Divisions. The addition of such requirements fall within CBP's discretionary abilities and don't require any regulatory changes, he said. The live entry requirements allow CBP to go over the entry filing to check for any problems, such as misclassifications or misidentified antidumping cases, said Riley. That also allows CBP to make sure that the filer is able to pay the required duties on the import, he said.

To determine whether a certain type of steel constitutes a high risk, CBP is starting from the list of over a hundred AD/CVD orders enacted by the Commerce Department and International Trade Commission, said Riley. "We're taking a risk managed approach toward this and we do our analysis on this based on prior compliance issues as well as looking at maybe the information provided by [Commerce] on any types of recent evasion or any information that we have coming in through our allegation system to identify those particular products we need to focus on more intently."

Responses to problematic filings on the live entry differ based on the violation, said Amdur. The spectrum of enforcement measures include "collecting the duties on the shipment," additional penalties and possible referral to ICE's Homeland Security Investigations arm for further action, he said. The new requirements coincide with added levels of outreach with certain industries "to increase the knowledge base of what we're looking for," he said. There's been an increase in "outreach and partnership with all industries that are affected by the AD/CVD orders" over the past year, said Amdur. Amdur didn't specify any imminent plans for similar live entry measures on other products, but said the agency is always reviewing "incoming imports and using appropriate tools such as live entry," he said.

The industry-focused outreach and enforcement also connect closely with the Centers of Excellence and Expertise, the last six of which are scheduled for full-scale processing on March 23 (see 1602080029), said Riley. The CEEs will play a "vital role" both on the "front line assessment, analysis capabilities as well as the back end enforcement capabilities" when compliance issues are discovered, he said. CBP headquarters coordinates such initiatives with the CEEs and ports through internal policy directives and other outreach, said Riley.