Questions Remain at CBP for Continuing Ed for Brokers; More Forced Labor Penalties Expected

CBP remains cautious in moving toward continuing education requirements for customs brokers as it continues to examine the issues that derailed a similar effort some years ago, said Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner of CBP’s Office of Trade, during a Jan. 29 interview with International Trade Today. CBP recently launched a task force on the subject (see 1910160056), but the agency is considering whether an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) is necessary before issuing an actual proposal, she said.

After the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America “pitched” CBP on taking a new look at continuing education, the agency “dusted off” the past work on the issue and brought back Elena Ryan, who previously worked on the issue, to help develop recommendations. “Our belief is that there is likely regulatory work to be done, but we're trying to understand whether the best track is an” ANPRM or whether CBP knows enough to go right to a proposed rulemaking, she said. “I think there's some question,” she said.

During the last discussion of a continuing education requirement, “it would have required a reg change that would have required us to get fairly specific,” she said. “We weren't ready to do that. I think we are now ready to solve some of those problems and are ready to put our shoulder into a regulation change,” she said. Timing remains up the air, she said. An update to the Part 111 customs broker regulations remains under review (see 1804110024), but “I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll see it in the next six months,” she said.

Smith said CBP is planning to start issuing more monetary penalties related to forced labor. “As we've really revamped our approach to enforcing or using our forced labor authority, there are several things that we either want to fix or things we want to amplify,” she said. “I absolutely think that penalties is one of those things. We have just recently issued our first penalty around forced labor. We haven't announced it because the enforcement action isn't complete, but it is related to one of our withhold release orders and it is significant. So we're pretty excited about the message that that ultimately will send and so penalties is absolutely an area that we should and can do more in, but there are others as well.” It is difficult to meet the standards for forced labor enforcement actions, so “I don't think you're going to see a hundred of these penalties every year, but I do think when you have an egregious situation that penalties are a way to get across to people that our expectation is that they will know their supply chains.”

Meanwhile, the other recent Department of Homeland Security report on preventing counterfeit imports through e-commerce shipments (see 2001240043) includes a combination of actions that CBP could take immediately, while others might require a regulatory process, she said. “There is an expectation that CBP will, as quickly as possible, implement a number of the recommendations,” she said. “We are pretty comfortable that we've got a head start on many of those recommendations through” the ongoing Section 321 and Type 86 pilots that are focused on small value shipments, she said.

Asked about the recent Section 232 expansion (see 2001280072), Smith said CBP and the government itself have become better at reacting to trade-related actions after some 49 Federal Register notices and eight presidential proclamations. Now, there's a wider understanding of trade laws and the importance of clear alignment with Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes, she said. Smith also confirmed that the agency is not planning to issue a blanket authority for the use of immediate delivery procedures in connection with the scheduled Feb. 14 duty cut to some of the goods from China subject to Section 301 tariffs (see 2001160019). The NCBFAA requested a blanket authority and subsequently said that is unlikely.