CBP Discussing Adding FTZ Operators as CTPAT Entity

CBP is in the very early stages of considering whether to expand the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program to foreign-trade zones, said Lydia Jackson, FTZ program manager in the CBP Office of Cargo and Conveyance Security. She spoke Feb. 11 during the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones legislative summit. The question has been approached before by CBP, and the agency previously found the problem to be that the FTZ importer is “not always the same entity, etc., etc.,” she said.

Now, “we're looking at [FTZ] operators being a new entity for CTPAT in the Trusted Trader program,” she said. “This discussion has just begun, but we really think this is the way forward internationally.” It's not certain how long the “process will be” and Jackson “may not be absolutely involved in that,” she said.

CBP will not be pursuing regulatory changes to its foreign-trade zone program based on intergovernmental efforts to develop standards for FTZs, Jackson said. “Are we changing our regs?” she said. “Well, yeah, hopefully. But because of these things? No.” The World Customs Organization is coming out with “guidelines” and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has offered a “code of conduct” on FTZs, she said. CBP is going to do “what we've continued to do,” she said. FTZs at CBP is a “mature program” and is “very regulated,” Jackson said. Those international documents are seen as a “gap doctrine for countries that are more like the Wild West and are not as regulated and compliant as we are,” Jackson said.