Customs Business Fairness Act Introduced in House

A permanent extension to the policy that protected customs brokers from having clawbacks as a result of their customers' bankruptcies was proposed by Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., on July 29. Currently, the duties that brokers transfer to CBP are not treated as vendor payments, so they are not subject to clawback provisions under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, whereby payments to vendors within 90 days can be seized by the bankruptcy courts for redistribution. But that change expires at the end of the year (see 2012210045).

The policy, called the Customs Business Fairness Act, is one that the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America had been seeking for more than 20 years.

This bill has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors, including Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif. The NCBFAA is asking its members to lobby their local members to co-sponsor the bill, or to vote for it. The group praised the JFK Airport CBFFA for convincing Garbarino and Meeks to sign on to the bill.