CBP Working With Trade Community to Speed Up OR&R Rulings Process

MIAMI -- CBP and the Customs Commercial Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) are ramping up efforts to improve the customs ruling process so importers can get quicker responses from CBP headquarters, said Brenda Smith, CBP executive assistant commissioner for trade, and Lenny Feldman of Sandler Travis, who co-chairs COAC’s trade modernization subcommittee. The COAC will announce a “public-private partnership” at its Nov. 17 meeting in Washington to build on its existing efforts to modernize the rulings process, Feldman said, speaking at the Florida Customs Brokers & Forwarders Conference of the Americas on Nov. 15.

A document (here) posted in advance of the Nov. 17 meeting by the COAC trade modernization subcommittee says a COAC working group “will identify areas for process improvement in the receipt and issuance of CBP HQ rulings and decisions focusing on tariff classification, valuation, origin, preference programs, drawback and other aspects of the entry and duty refund process. The goal is to retain the high quality of existing rulings while improving substantially the delivery time for receipt of the rulings.” Currently, “in a number of instances, the prolonged time taken for consideration and issuance of these decisions may diminish their value to the trader.” COAC began considering the issue in July (see 1607280005).

For rulings issued by CBP national import specialists, CBP is actually meeting its target of issuing rulings within 30 days of receiving requests. But more complicated issues that get passed to CBP’s Office of Regulations & Rulings in Washington for review by a CBP attorney very often “take a while to answer,” she acknowledged. There “have got to be ways to move the decision process along more quickly,” she said, adding that she has shared that opinion with OR&R. Feldman and Smith discussed the issue at the Florida conference after Neil Mooney, a customs lawyer, noted that it can take as much as 18 months for OR&R to even look at a ruling request, and another 18 months to respond.

One major reason CBP HQ rulings take so long is that OR&R lawyers must review the more than 3,000 rulings “that are sitting out there as precedent for any decision we have to make today.” One possibility to speed up the process might be to “sunset” some rulings, Smith said. That would allow CBP lawyers to “start fresh when a new technology comes along or a new approach is necessary,” she said.