CBP Set to Announce 21st Century 'Task Force' Members in July, Conclude Meetings by September

CBP will “soon” provide more information on who is participating in a task force of industry representatives and government officials developing a new customs legislative framework as part of CBP’s 21st Century Customs Framework, said Garrett Wright, who leads the effort as director of trade modernization at CBP’s Office of Trade.

The agency will announce the companies and trade associations represented in the task force, which includes 43 trade community participants and about 90 total, “hopefully before” CBP’s Virtual Trade Week in mid-July. CBP will also announce the identities of individual members of a 12-member “focus group” that will vet recommendations from the broader task force before they are presented to the broader Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee, Wright said at the COAC’s June 23 meeting.

Trade community participants in the task force comprise the “full gamut” of trade roles, “including, but not limited to, customs brokers, online marketplaces, carriers, companies small, medium and large, every member of the COAC and many if not all of the major trade associations that the agency interacts with on a daily basis,” Wright said. Government participants include CBP program leads, subject matter experts and partner government agencies, he said.

The task force has now met six times out of a total 10 meetings it aims to hold by August, “if not mid-September,” Wright said. The task force’s focus group will then “develop recommendations on whether and how to incorporate feedback” received in those 10 meetings, “then report the recommendations back out to the task force and up to the broader COAC,” Wright said. “That is no small undertaking for this group.”

The focus group will meet for the first time on June 28, where it will “brainstorm and lock in” its approach and schedule. “Somewhere in those discussions, we want to figure out the right way to invite trade feedback beyond our task force and COAC structure,” Wright said. CBP appreciates the “merit” of expanding the “feedback loop,” but wants to keep the process manageable, Wright said. The agency wants to give the trade community “something more polished and closer to a final product. That’s exactly why we have the task force and focus group,” he said.