CBP to Outline New E-Commerce Strategy

Customs and Border Protection will soon announce a strategy to address the explosion of e-commerce imports, said acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan at the American Association of Exporters and Importers annual conference in Austin. CBP will combine engagement and education with internal changes that will help ports deal with surging volumes, he said. Enforcement will evaluate the compliance rate in "various e-commerce environments,” McAleenan said Wednesday. He said a recent five-day interagency operation at Kennedy International Airport in New York found a noncompliance rate of 43 percent of packages examined, with 800 intellectual property rights violations among nearly 1,300 noncompliant shipments. CBP’s e-commerce strategy will focus largely on small businesses, which are benefiting from the rapid expansion of e-commerce but “don’t necessarily know about international trade laws and regulations,” McAleenan said. CBP will conduct outreach and provide an “essential repository of information on clearance requirements,” he said. In combination with the recent increase in the de minimis limit to $800, the rapid rise of e-commerce caused shipments at some ports to increase by over 500 percent in the last 15 months, overwhelming what had been a “perfectly adequate staffing level,” he said.