CBP to Extend Export Manifest Pilot, Preparing Other Reg Changes

CBP is preparing to issue several notices to extend or update its export-related filing regulations, including two involving electronic export manifest, said Jim Swanson, CBP’s director of the Cargo and Security Controls Division. Swanson, speaking during a Sept. 21 National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones conference, said the agency will soon extend its electronic export manifest pilot program and plans to change regulations to allow CBP to better trace and receive data on exports.

Although Swanson said in July that the agency was drafting an announcement to mandate the use of electronic export manifests (see 2107220036), he said that announcement won’t be ready before the current pilot program expires. He said CBP will extend the pilot until we “go fully live with a mandated export manifest.” CBP had hoped to mandate an export manifest before the end of the year, which will require exporters to file a departure notice as an automated proof of export for every shipment.

CBP is also planning to roll out a regulatory change that will “leverage” the advance electronic information in electronic manifests “so that all the shipments moving out of the country will be covered under” the information provided by carriers. This will allow the agency to “better trace” and “prove” exports, Swanson said, because the data will be shared with CBP’s systems.

“If you reported something as exported” and the “vessel or that aircraft departs, we will then be able to link those pieces of data together and actually ensure that we're doing our own internal auditing,” Swanson said. He said this process will reduce what gets “picked up on our audit trail, thereby reducing our workload and yours through requests for information that we send out on in-bonds, for example, when they don't get closed out properly because somebody didn't hit a button.”

The agency also has plans to help CBP agents better conduct compliance reviews for foreign-trade zones, Swanson said. Agents at both airports and seaports in Los Angeles said they would like to better utilize electronic data, so they have a “better feeling for what [they] should be looking at,” Swanson said. “We want to be able to have that totality picture, so that my folks can basically do a little more than hit a button, run a report for a foreign-trade zone, and see what went in and what came out.” He said agents will be able to get more information from electronic export data “so that we're not coming in with a broad swath of things that we're asking you to show.”