Census Planning to Issue Proposed Rules for Routed Export Transactions This Fall

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- The Census Bureau expects to issue proposed rules for routed export transactions by the fall, said Omari Wooden, assistant division chief, International Trade Management Division at Census. Census is in the process of going through many issues raised by industry in comments to the agency (see 1712070039), Wooden said at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America's annual conference on May 1. "We are the government, so instead of months, we give you seasons, so probably sometime in the fall we're hopeful to come out with something," he said.

Wooden also discussed the agency's position on how to report to the government goods that were entered into the U.S. properly, but were discovered by the importer to be problematic and needing export. "That party that received the goods, and opened it and saw it, they are the U.S. Party of Principal Interest" for export purposes, he said. For cases of export by a single U.S. principal for items coming from multiple places but being exported in a single shipment, the filer should list the destination address of the product with the greatest value, Wooden said. If the value isn't known, the filer should then use a consolidation point as the address, he said.

Export manifest in ACE is the major export-related project at CBP, said Jim Swanson, CBP director-cargo and conveyance security and controls. It has "broad-ranging applications for proof of export for things like in-bond work, or IBS, and for drawback, so those of you who work in all of those areas need to be aware that the export manifest piece is important." Most of the emphasis in recent years has been on the import side, but "the big driver we think is going to be as we begin to move forward publishing and planning our regulations, mandating the use of export manifest as a Trade Act requirement and moving the Trade Act requirement from AES over to export manifest for the carriers," he said. "We think that will drive a lot of the requirements because a lot of the same parties are involved," he said.

There are some carriers and forwarders "on board," but "we need some more partners from the freight forwarding and the NV community, and to that end we're trying to put some incentives out there," he said. The agency is hoping to compile and publish a list of standard operating procedures to help drive more participation, and which also help create a working model for export manifest regulations, he said. The SOPs should be out in the fall of this year, he said. Later this year the agency will float around some potential regulatory changes for export manifest, he said.

CBP also is providing for a wider allowable time frame for when a shipment is actually transported, compared to the listed date of export, he said. "We have just recently announced an internal policy and will be providing an outside guidance on that," he said. "We are extending the window for all modes at CBP to a 10-day window." That means if "you report a date and it exports within 10 days of that we will not be issuing any export misses on the date of export," he said. CBP also is looking at updating post-departure filing regulations, he said. "We've begun to test some of the pieces of this," he said. CBP also has been working closely with other agencies on efforts to move items from the military list to the common list for export controls. "It's getting close to being published," he said.