Possible New Ocean Carrier CTPAT MSC Draw Concern; CBP Considering 'Alternatives' to Trade Compliance Validations

Recently proposed additional Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism Minimum Security Criteria for ocean carriers beyond the previously planned changes for 2020 are raising some concern, said Michael Young, vice president of Business Process and System at shipping company OOCL, during the Dec. 4 Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting. Young, who is on the COAC, said during the meeting that there were seven minimum security criteria recently added for ocean carriers. CBP “did propose additional MSC in light of the recent smuggling issues that happened” as a way “to address the situation that occurred in those high-profile cases,” Young said in an email after the meeting. He declined to go into specifics because the proposal is still under discussion.

During the COAC meeting, Young said that “we just want to make sure there's an opportunity to have an effective dialog.” While most of the newly proposed MSCs seem feasible to implement, “two or three of them will require some significant changes from an ocean carrier perspective,” he said. A broad update to the CTPAT MSC is scheduled to be rolled out in 2020 (see 1911080064).

There are ongoing discussions with CBP, and Manuel Garza, director of CTPAT, “has been very receptive” to the request for further examination of the issue, Young said. “I don't expect they will be significantly changed,” but the discussion will help to make sure that the ocean carriers can be compliant “at the early part of 2020 as we move forward with the new MSC,” Young said. CBP didn't comment.

Meanwhile, CBP is evaluating the potential of “alternatives to validation” within the CTPAT trade compliance program, Garza said at the meeting. “We have a lot of validations, we don't have enough staff to get everything done, and so we are looking at new ways of doing things,” he said. CBP's Trusted Trader Working Group report also mentioned the effort and said the agency has “identified four companies to conduct a pilot to test an alternate method for validations beginning in Q1 of FY2020.”

CBP recently started the transition of Importer Self-Assessment members into the trade compliance program, Garza said. “It's important to note that we did already start the integration from ISA to trade compliance back in August, I believe, when we integrated around 50-plus companies,” he said. “We have started the research now for the next 50 to 75 companies who will probably be moving forward” in February 2020. “Unfortunately, it's not as easy as plugging in your email address and information. We have to do a lot of work on the back end of our portal system to get companies registered, so we have to do it in batches,” rather than one by one, Garza said. “So it's a little different, a little more tedious, effort that goes along with that.”