CBP Legislative Task Force Bound by Nondisclosure Agreements, Membership Still Unreleased

A task force made up of government and industry representatives developing legislative language under CBP's 21st Century Customs Framework effort "have signed nondisclosure agreements," said John Leonard, acting executive assistant commissioner for trade, while speaking during a Foreign Trade Association World Trade Week event May 20. That "limits them to a certain extent," though "communications can happen via associations through members back up to the task force, so it's not going to be completely done in a vacuum." The NDAs were necessary "to make this thing actually be able to function in reality and get stuff done before it becomes law," he said.

Some feel CBP is being too secretive. "The problem is nobody knows who is on the task force," said Mitchell Silberberg lawyer Susan Kohn Ross. Asked about who is on the task force, a CBP spokesman said May 21 that the agency is in the process of "gathering information" for a response. International Trade Today recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request for that list.

"Everybody’s under seal on this thing," Ross said during a later session of the event. "The lawyers at Customs decided that’s the way to handle it.” She said that’s not how it worked when Customs was working on the Customs Modernization Act, during which "there was a huge amount of input from the trade.” She said several national trade associations have told CBP that the 21st Century Customs Framework bill won’t be successful if they don’t get meaningful feedback from the trade professionals.

The task force has met three times so far on the "legislative language," Leonard said. "We are actually being very, very transparent about this. Our deputy commissioner made a point that we weren't going to be secretive about it or try to unveil it at the last minute. Nope, we're actually working in full transparency without the task force to show ... what the actual legislative language is looking like."

It is too early in the process to say what will be in the language, when it will be passed or what legislation it might be a part of, he said. "We're confident that the folks on Capitol Hill are supportive of it, they see the need for this modernization, and it will eventually find its way hopefully to a bill and get passed, and then we'll all get to implement it, which will be also entertaining," Leonard said.

When Ross was asked if she thinks CBP eventually will be less secretive about the bill’s drafting, she said, “I think the answer is yes, inevitably.” A better question "is when," she said. "Are we going to have enough opportunity, timewise, to have significant input?" She said she’s concerned CBP will present the finished draft to the trade, which will mean trade interests will have to meet with Senate and House committee staffers, and she said they don’t “get supply chain stuff” as well as CBP does.